Given the recent popularity of increasingly complex, imaginative, and interactive charts and graphs, it’s easy to believe that data visualization is new. But it isn’t.
There is a long history of data pioneers—some you’ve likely heard of—using data to understand large-scale issues in order to tell stories and design appropriate solutions. John Snow’s mapping of London cholera cases in 1854 led to life-saving public health interventions. Nurse and mathematician Florence Nightingale developed innovative charts to understand and improve the sanitation of soldiers in the Crimean War.
Today (one day after his birthday), we want to celebrate economist, sociologist, historian, and Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) professor W.E.B. Du Bois.
Widely known for his writing—including The Souls of Black Folk—and civil rights leadership, Du Bois composed a series of hand-illustrated data visualizations for the Paris Exhibition in 1900. These charts and maps conveyed the socioeconomic conditions and migration patterns of Georgia’s Black residents just after ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
See the full collection Du Bois’s visualizations at the Library of Congress. And read more about “How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America.”
