W.E.B. Du Bois was many things in his lifetime: a civil rights activist—he was a co-founder of the NAACP—a sociologist, a historian, a poet, and an author. And, in a lesser-known role, he was a designer.
Du Bois, who was born on February 23, 1868, attended the 1900 Paris Exposition to present the Exhibit of the American Negroes, a look at the lives of African Americans.
Du Bois himself prepared charts, graphs, and maps to visualize the status and progress of black Americans, particularly in Georgia, where he lived at the time. His colorful, imaginative visualizations, recently discussed on the Public Domain Review, covered topics like income distribution, property values, city population statistics, and marriage rates among African Americans. Here are a few of the exhibition’s highlights:
[h/t Public Domain Review]
All images by W.E.B. Du Bois // Public Domain
February 23, 2017 – 8:00am