W. e. b. du bois's data portraits: visualizing black america, hardcover/the w e b du bois center at the universi

The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W.

Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of the color line.

From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics--beautiful in design and powerful in content-- make visible a wide spectrum of black experience.

Du Boiss Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphics in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination.

As Maria Popova wrote, these data portraits shaped how Du Bois himself thought about sociology, informing the ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later in The Souls of Black Folk.

About the Author: Whitney Battle-Baptiste is the director of the W.

Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts Amherst and an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology.

She is the author of Black Feminist Archaeology .

Britt Rusert is an assistant professor in the W.

Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture .