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I found plates 26 and 27 the two most interesting plates. Plate 26 shows the occupation of black males in Georgia. Since this plate shows the data for one single group, there was only one color used. The length of the lines shows the numbers of the population. The first line, however, turns towards the opposite side when it reaches the end but still represent a higher number of folks in that field.  Another significant information is that there were more Blacks in the agricultural and laborers field in the 1890. It's not clear and not enough information is not provided but this might be in reference to the enslaved blacks who were forced to work in the plantations.
Plate 27 compares the percentage of blacks and whites in various occupations in Georgia. the percentage of whites and blacks in agriculture, fisheries and mining is about the same. Looking at the size of the chart, the yellow line that represent "domestic and personal service" shows 28% of blacks worked in this field compared to 55% of whites. However, the pie that represent the 28% of the blacks if much bigger than the one that represent the 55% of whites.

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I found plates 50 and 58 that show the economic conditions to be informative. Plate 58's semi circle shows half of every hundred thousand Negroes are poor in 1890 in Georgia with an accompanying bar chart showing slightly more men than women are poor. Plate 50 shows nearly 20% own property after fairly recently being emancipated just 30 years prior, now deemed peasant proprietors, while the rest (81%) live as tenants (or seek almshouses as inferred from plate 58), with no aid from the government for most. When thought about in relation to each other, these plates show most Blacks at the time of the Paris Exposition were poor and indebted as tenant farmers, but there were clear bright spots in their advancement since the time 90% were slaves and owned no property.

For the updated images, I found Georgia by county with the "heat map" colors of black and blue most striking with change in the growth of Black population in Atlanta and surrounding counties.

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Plate 22:
I found this plate really provocative - it is a target and a pie chart with slices through it.
The use of color is effective and the shaky lines to bleed color through creates a harsh and sharp effect that serves to draw the eye toward the number in the center $5,333,885.

Plate 57
I love how this plate goes against the viewers expectations. When you first look at it you think it will be a traditional bar graph but then upon closer look, it is not, but rather a series of squares and rectangles that are not arranged in any particular order. The shapes are meant to represent relative size of the numbers of black business men in each occupation. Such a different way to tell the story and draw the read to wonder what does that big yellow box represent and then follow the line back to the answer.

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I thought plate 30 was interesting.  Its method of reversing the traditional color scheme of black being profit and red meaning debt, the plate displays the significant debt that black people had to content with in 1898.  It's perhaps a representative group, but the notion is compelling regardless.

I also liked the series of plates focusing on black education over the years, painting the picture that it was increasing, becoming more of a priority, and comparable to many other places.  Plate 47, which compared the illiteracy rate of black Americans with the total populations of other countries, was particularly interesting, just because one would have to draw the conclusion that race had nothing to do with black illiteracy.

Finally, I loved the updated plate 27, showing the relative professions of white people and black people in 2019. While the professions are dramatically different, the story that the image shows is the same one: proportions of each poulation in each profession are remarkably similar for black and white people and balanced against one another.

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Plate 25 - Assessed Value of Household and Kitchen Furniture

This spiral graph shows the drastic growth of wealth in material goods between 1875 and 1899. In contrast to a traditional bar graph, the choice to group the data in a way that the eye can take it all in at once allows the reader to grasp the difference between small and large categories. It is often hard to display scaled data in a way to be consumed all at once, and this does so. Symbolically, the center of the image leads to a target of wealth. This could be interpreted as a vision of the future for negro citizens.

Plate 44 - Proportion of Whites and Negroes in different classes of occupation

This circle graph shows categories of occupations: all, manufacturing, trade, domestic, professional, and agriculture. Each category has a sliver in black to show the relative proportion of Negroes vs Whites. The shape suggests slices of pie, and it is clearly not equal.

Updated Plate 27 - Occupations of Blacks and Whites in Georgia

This partial circle graph uses mirrored color slices to compare size of groups within each industry. The almost symmetrical image makes the differences even more noticeable.

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Plate 25

Using data about the value of kitchen furniture, this plate shows independence and ownership grew by over 2,000% in the five years from 1875 to 1880 and thereafter continued to grow steadily but not as dramatically.

The symmetry and singular focus of a spiral are pleasing to the eye and the contrast of the lengths of the bars is highlighted by the shortest one on the outside of the spiral.

What are the main messages of the graphic?

Plate 37

This bilingual plate, English and French for the Paris World Fair, is a pie chart of the professions of African Americans drawn by an all-black  Atlanta University.

It is interesting to me that 60% of Blacks in Georgia were teachers, perhaps to support and promote the black community through education.

Updated Plate 38

The distribution of Blacks in the United States in 2019 is so similar to the Du Bois map of 1890, one hundred and 30 years earlier. It is interesting to consider the impact of pixelation on the 2019 map. I wonder if the maps would be more similar if that had been shown in the 1890 map.

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What are the main messages of the graphic? Plate 51 is comparing the number of African Americans that are free vs. enslaved from 1790 to 1870.  This plate depicts a national picture and is compared to Plate 12 - a local representation of the same concept.  On Plate 57 the main message is to convey the relative proportions of African Americans in certain professions at that time.

What makes this slide informative-interesting? Plate 51 is visually interesting (as compared to Plate 12) because of the differing colors used and orientation of the images on the page.  I wonder if the use of the color black to represent slavery was chosen to represent the death of the souls associated with that oppressive and harmful life? On Plate 57 the relative size differences of the boxes, representing each profession is clear and very easy to discern, even at a quick glance. It is not surprising that the fewest people are represented in the banking and financing/loans industries etc. There are no flowing or moving lines. All boxes are clearly defined and appear to be fixed - suggestive of the times when making career movement was not feasible within the social context.

Which of the updated Du Bois visualizations is most interesting to you? On Plate 58 - a different idea altogether, creates an instant feeling as one looks at this data representation. As long as one is not colorblind, one immediately sees a tiny red dot in the middle of the image. This small dot represents the relative percentage of African American individuals who were receiving any sort of state or national aid. It is so small.

What makes the pair of visualizations most interesting-informative? Within the plates, something that is represented in both plates, in one way or another, are the relative percentages of oppressed populations - no matter what the specific topic is that is being represented in the overall visual graphic.

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Plate 30.  Conditions of 300 Negro farm tenants after one year’s toil.  1888

The reverse colors profit and loss.  When you are “in the red” you are usually losing money and, in this plate, you are making money and black is just the opposite.

Plate 45. Occupations in which 10,000 or more American Negroes are engaged.

What makes it interesting and / or informative. American negroes were mostly used for southern farm work and for household servants.  Only the top 5 occupations have any large numbers in them.

Du Bois depicts data in very colorful presentations. He brings the struggles of the American Negroes to life with his graphical representations of data.

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Plate 28, "Occupations of Negroes and Whites in Georgia" was a striking visual data representation using a fan style pie chart showing the occupational categories of Black people on the top of the page, mirrored by the same chart for white people below. This allows for a really easy visual comparison between categories.

Also, there is a sense of circular movement to this chart, almost like a spinning wheel, and I think since the Black data is on top, there is a story of 'Black momentum" being depicted.

Plate 31, "Income and Expenditure of 150 Negro Families in Atlanta, GA, USA" was quite fascinating to me in terms of how much detail they were able to portray regarding family income and expenditures, including:

-class delineation by income brackets, average income, and labels
-what percentage of a family's income was spent on different categories, and the differences in expenditures between families that were considered poor up to well-to-do

I found the updated Plate 38 to be really interesting for two reasons: first, the presentation of data by county not just by state offers a more precise visual of the distribution of Black people in the United States, and also how overall, aside from California, there are striking similarities in terms of this distribution when we compare the graphics from 1900 and 2019.

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Plate 41:

·      What are the main messages of the graphic?

This plate is comparing the population of African Americans in the United States with the total population of other countries.  The prevailing message is that the African American population is both strong and growing which, at the time, flew in the face of the contemporary racist science that predicted the inevitable extinction of the Negro race due to their supposed inferior make-up

·      What makes them interesting - informative?

The power of this diagram comes from its simplicity.  It uses two basic colors (red and black) and recognizable shapes (the outlines of countries) to illustrate how the population of African Americans in the Unites States is larger than the entire population of Australia, and of Norway, and of Sweden, and of Switzerland, and of the Netherlands, and of Belgium, and of Germany.  This is an amazing display of the significant presence African Americans on the world stage.

Plate 50:

·      What are the main messages of the graphic?

This plate illustrates the meteoric rise of African Americans from slavery to freedom in just one generation.  This is demonstrated by comparing the number of African Americans who were slaves in 1860 (89%) compared with the number of African Americans who owned their own land (19%), as well as the number of free laborers (81%) in 1890, just 30 years later.

·      What makes them interesting - informative?

What is so impressive about this diagram is the radical, life-altering transformation that it succinctly communicates.  I can’t imagine a more extreme or dramatic change of circumstance than to go from being an enslaved person to a free person, along with all the responsibilities, challenges, disadvantages, etc. that accompanies it. This chart ultimately illustrates the astonishing strength, perseverance, ingenuity, bravery, and innate intelligence of a people who had been physically, mentally, and spiritually oppressed in the worst possible ways for over 200 years.

27

·      Which of the updated Du Bois visualizations is most interesting to you?

I found the Occupations of Black and Whites in Georgia 2019 to be quite fascinating.  Not surprisingly, the 2019 diagram features more occupations than the 1900 diagram.   It is interesting to see how these occupations are distributed between the Black and White population.  Sales & Office appear to be similar among the two populations with Blacks representing 20% and Whites 21%.  Likewise, Protective Services show just a 1% difference between the two groups with Blacks representing 3% and Whites 2%.  Manufacture, Construction and Repair has a lightly higher difference of 3% between the two populations (Blacks 12% and Whites 15%).

The occupations that demonstrate more divergence between the Black and White populations include Hospitality & Domestic Services with a 6% difference (Blacks 17% and Whites 11%), Trade & Transportation with a 7% difference (Black 14% and Whites 7%), and finally the largest difference being 11% in the Professions category where Blacks represent 32% and Whites 43%.  A concerning factor in the divergent occupations is that the Black population consistently has greater numbers in the professions that earn less money, whereas the Whites consistently have greater numbers in the professions that earn more money.  This more than likely contributes to the ongoing income and wealth inequality between Whites and Blacks.

·      What makes the pair of visualizations most interesting - informative?

What I find to be most interesting when comparing these two diagrams is that the predominant occupations for both Blacks and Whites in 1900 (Agriculture, Fisheries, and Mining with 64% Whites and 62% Blacks) are the least practiced occupations by both Blacks and Whites in 2019 (Agriculture, Fishing, and Forestry with 0.5% Whites and 0.33% Blacks).  This illustrates a massive transformation in the occupational lives of both Black and Whites over the course of just 119 years.

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I found the very first plate to be very powerful. The rate of growth of property values in context with the political climate for Blacks after the Civil War is interesting to consider in comparison to today's climate. The use of the text that describes the various influences such as the Ku Klux Klan and Lynching as they related to the very distinct black line charting the sharp rise and subsequent decline was very powerful in my opinion.

Plate 27 was interesting to me because of the comparison of occupations. Had I been given an opportunity to provide my own estimate of this I think that I would not have been even close to accurate. I was surprised by the similarities of the number of agricultural workers in each group. I would have assumed that Blacks would have made up a much larger percentage of agricultural workers given the role of Black slaves (or my perception of this from popular media) in the agricultural work in the South as well as the prevalence of sharecropping after Emancipation that Blacks would be much more likely than Whites to work in agriculture. What didn't surprize me was the disparity in the the number who worked in Domestic or Personal service work.

I appreciated being able to see this after being so fascinated by the original Plate 27. I am not at all surprised that Whites are represented in Professions and that Blacks are much more represented in Trades and Transportation and Domestic and Hospitality Services. The access to higher-paying careers is a hurdle we still yet to clear.

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Mara Sanchez: Plates 47 & 58, Updated 2-B

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Mara Sanchez: Plates 47 & 58, Updated 2-B

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The main message of Plate 47 is that while there was a large amount of illiteracy in the black population at that time, there were other populations with greater illiteracy. The main message of plate 58 is that only a small number in the black population could be considered paupers. Both plates contribute to one of the central themes of this project, which was to contradict prevailing stereotypes about the black population that time around literacy and productivity, as well as capability and self-efficacy. The updated visualization that stood out most to be was 2-B, which shows the population of people of african descent in 2019 in various states, color coded with the same colors as were used in DuBois' plates. What I find interesting about this is seeing how this map matches the map of the updated black population, that populations of African descent are living in similar places as American black populations, with similar relative numbers.

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I am a big fan of infographics and Plate 31 looks like one to me. I love how there are multiple sets of information combined into one sheet that create the bigger picture of income and expense and that each set is represented differently. There are colors and images and even photographs. I don’t think I would have stuck around to read the details of this Plate if it wasn’t presented in such a manner. I was also drawn to Plate 34. I didn’t count the dots but will trust that they did represent the 2,500 people they claim. This stands out to me for a number of reasons. First, the amount of detail that was put into it by giving attention to each section and color coding it. How straight the lines are drawn amazes me as well. Lastly, the image has its intended effect of representing how people of different wealth are distributed. I also prefer this plate to its partners and I think it's because of the grid pattern.

Plate 27 certainly stands out as the most interesting updated plate because of how even the distribution is among whites and blacks. It had already been more evenly dispersed than I would have expected in 1900 but with new professions added they are even closer. A few things stand out to me. If I assume Georgia is representative of the US in this example. If the jobs are so evenly distributed in the present day, why is income distribution still so skewed? What happens if other races are factored into this graph? And on another note, it shouldn’t be a surprise but it is still visually jarring to see the flip of the agricultural and professional industries. I think I didn’t expect that the two combined in 2019 would be as little as less than 1% of the agriculture, fishing, and forestry occupations.

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Plate 53: Conjugal Condition of American Negroes According to Age Periods

I think the most powerful message of plate 53 is to see the high proportion of widowed females at all ages. This raises questions about the causes of widowhood. What does nearly 45% of females between 55-65 are widowed and more than 65% of females over 65 suggest about Black male life expectancy and the underlying causes of earlier death (e.g., impact of labor, limited or no access to health care, food insecurity, etc.). And the increased numbers of windows in the younger ages (20-25, 25-30, 30-35) makes you wonder about the causes of death for Black men at younger ages, raising the issue of lynching.

If one of the goals of a visualization is to catch the viewer’s attention, this plate does a good job. It is boldly colored, nearly symmetrical in its composition (but not entirely), and reads as artistic. The symmetrical construction of % males and % females is what allows the viewer to begin to draw inferences and generate questions: you naturally want to compare the nature of each color and shape for males and females, at which point you begin to identify key differences. Du Bois et al play with the scale (age ranges) on the y-axis, I think, to emphasize the prevalence of widows between 20-35. It’s also interesting to look closely at the grid that comprised this chart to realize that each column amounts to a 2% interval, so it is possible to ascertain exact data from this chart.

Plate 59: Mortality of American Negroes

The main message of plate 59, Mortality of American Negroes, is to show the impact of race, class, and societal conditions on mortality rates. In this chart, Du Bois et al. contrast the mortality rates of 3 different wards in Philadelphia to the U.S. as a whole and to U.S. cities/urban areas. It makes the point that the “5th ward slum” has a significantly higher mortality rate than the U.S. and the other comparison wards. It also makes the point that mortality rates of Black persons living in mixed class and better class wards are outperforming the mortality rates of the country as a whole and that Black mobility will yield positive health outcomes.

There is a simplicity to the bar chart that makes this an accessible and impactful visualization: you can read it and understand the comparisons very quickly. The x-axis labels are equally as important, as this is what conveys that it is a class analysis: “5th Ward Slum,” “Mixed Class,” and “Better Class.”

Plate 2: Relative Black Population of the States of the United States

I appreciated the simplicity of this map both in Du Bois’ original form and in Lawrence’s 2019 update. Lawrence made updates to the title to reflect current language as well as the legend to reflect the larger population and to consolidate from 10 categories to 8. What’s most important about this as a successful visualization is that the legend and the precision of the ranges is inconsequential to the understanding of the map, which operates as a sort of “heat map.” You can get a sense of the relative population just by looking at the descending order of the legend and the concentration of corresponding colors on the map. This is also an incredibly interesting comparison side-by-side with Du Bois’ original map. It tells a story of migration.

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The plates are describing population of white and Black people in the US and then the proportion of Black people in the total US population. I find both of these interesting in relation to plate 38. I am surprised by the relatively small number of Blacks and their lower rate of population growth relative to that of whites. The main messages appear to be just that. The color choices are interesting too - a red line on plate 40 for the Black population is activating and draws attention to itself, belying its more horizontal nature. I suppose this is purposeful and potentially illustrating, as the notes on plate 42 says, "blood shed for freedom." The colors in plate 42 make clearer sense to me. The black form of the outline of "Black America" feels continually more and more "at sea." I chose these two (along with plate 38 for the updated version) because there were so immediately informative. I didn't need to look at the numbers or read the notes to have a clear impression of the meaning.

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Rika Judd: Plates 47 & 51; Updated Plate 38

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Rika Judd: Plates 47 & 51; Updated Plate 38

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What are the main messages of the graphic?

Plate 47- This plate uses a bar chart, and bright colors to clearly illustrate the sheer number of illiterate American Negroes in comparison to other selected countries attending the Paris Exposition.

Plate 51- This plate illustrates the percentage of American Negroes enslaved as compared to free Negroes over a period of time, from the 1790s when slavery was active in the United States, versus 1870, which is just after slavery was abolished in the United States.

What makes them interesting - informative?

Plate 47- This plate is interesting because there is no percentage or number assigned to the comparison, so the viewer is left to see the difference purely through the use of color and the various lengths of the bar charts corresponding to different countries. This plate is informative because it helps to dispel any misconception that American Negroes are illiterate and that in spite of the lesser status of American Negroes in society, their illiteracy rates are better than several other European countries.

Plate 51- This plate is interesting because of the way the information is presented. It looks like an upside-down graph, in that the percentage of free American Negroes rises as the color visual representation in the graph goes down instead of up, as is more common in graphical representations. It’s informative because it indicates an upward trend towards freemen, and the black section of the graph that represents enslaved American Negroes is a startlingly vivid visualization of the large population of slaves as compared to freemen.

Which of the updated Du Bois visualizations is most interesting to you?

Plate 38- I find the comparison of the distribution of Blacks in the United States in 2019 versus 1890 interesting because it illustrates how the distribution hasn’t changed very much in the past 130 years, except for some Western expansion in California.

What makes the pair of visualizations most interesting - informative?

These visualizations are interesting because it shows how little the distribution has grown in over 100 years, with the exception of California and it is informative because it shows that even in 2019, there are some states that have less than 1 Black person per square mile. The states that have any increased their concentration of Black people look to be major urban areas, while rural areas remain largely unchanged.

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I was extremely surprised by Plate 38. I suddenly saw why so many Americans may be thinking the way they are. To me, having lived in NYC and Boston, and even now southern Coastal Maine, living in communities with people of all sorts of colors is not in anyway unusual. I've been the minority race in many situations. This graphic is shockingly similar to Du Bois's, with the notable exception of California. When people don't feel and experience something personally, it is hard for them to understand, and if you live somewhere without the opportunity to experience Black community members, you might reasonably feel confused by why there is so much energy going to people you experience as being invisible. I saw a similar situation during covid-19 - people in rural places in Maine, family members of mine, simply did not experience the pandemic as being "real." Until now.

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Plates 46 and 48 use horizontal bar graphs to simplistically show the increase in education of Black people. The first plate depicts the increase in Black teachers from 1886 to 1895, covering a nine-year period of growth. The plate does not use any numerical data and instead visually draws the viewer’s attention to the progress being made by Black people within the noble profession of education. Du Bois’ also emphasizes the importance of educational progress in Plate 48, which shows enrollment of Black students in schools. The bold brown bars show a 300% growth in enrollment from 1876 to 1895. Contrary to Washington, Du Bois fought for purposeful education of as a tool to uplift Black Americans. His plates underscore the leveraging power Du Bois felt education had to allow “the mass of people to obtain not only economic security but cultural progress” (Letter to Benjamin F. Hubert, 1942).

Plate 27 first caught my attention during our presentation at the Osher Map Library. The parallels of occupations held by White people compared to Black people in Georgia, with a predominately agricultural workforce for both races, is masterfully show by Du Bois. The radially sliced wedges could be classified as a circle graph yet a large portion of the graph is represented by negative space, drawing greater attention to the large complementary slices of the pie. Du Bois notably represents the Black occupations above the White occupations, as if the white occupations are cast as a shadow. The updated Plate 27 of occupations in Georgia in 2019, has a strikingly similar feel with wedges being comparable in size when comparing White and Black occupation percentages. While the occupations again mirror each other, the progress from the original plate to 2019 shows a shift from agricultural professions in both races to The Professions, which is inclusive of business and science careers. While the hospitality and domestic service pie wedge represents the third most common profession for Black people in 2019, it is not overly represented by the same 5:1 ratio (Black:White) as was the case in the original Du Bois plate, showing a positive shift in occupational stereotypes.

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Plates 27 and 58 were the most compelling of the selection for me. Plate 27 shows the percentages of Blacks and Whites in Georgia working in specific industries. The content is displayed to show how similar the distribution of labor is between the two racial groups. This debunks myths about the work that Black people in Georgia were doing at that time. The similarity is most striking in the agriculture, fishing, and mining industries which suggests that labor is shaped more by the geographic and rural characteristics of the state than by race. The thing I liked most about this plate though, was the layout and use of color in the display. It is creative and eye catching in format. This drew me into the display, making me want to explore it more deeply.

Plate 58 had a similar impact on me. The semicircle over rectangles to show the data is, again, eye catching and colorful. It is an unusual way to display data. When viewed more closely, it can be observed that the brown portion of the semicircle represents 100,000 Black people and the tiny, red section represents the 86 paupers in that community. This shows the discrepancy between myth and reality about Blacks in Georgia. Few are considered paupers. Instead the vast majority are self-reliant.

Given that Plate 27 was one of my choices of the two most interesting displays, it is probably no surprise that “The Occupations of Whites and Blacks in Georgia 2019” and Plate 27 is the most interesting pair for me. Aside from the visual appeal in these displays, it is very interesting that not much has changed since the turn of the twentieth century in terms of the representation of Blacks and Whites in Georgian industries. Some of the industries have changed and representation has branched out beyond agriculture to other industries. Despite these shifts, the relative percentages of Blacks and Whites in each of the industries bears a similar pattern to a hundred years ago. They are largely consistent with each other within the individual industries.

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Plate 23:
This plate depicts the population of black individuals in Savannah and Atlanta Georgia, it demonstrates the volume of black property owners and the corresponding value of the property owned. Based on the data presented, there was a higher population of black individuals who owned property in Savannah in the years 1880, 1890, and 1899 respectively. Interestingly, this property had less value than the property owned by black individuals in Atlanta during these same years, although the volume of black property owners in Atlanta was consistently less. In 1899 there were almost twice as many black property owners in Savannah when compared to Atlanta, yet the combined value of the property in Savannah was approximately two-thirds the value of the property in Atlanta.

After reviewing this data I began to consider what the living conditions may have been like in both locations. Were the properties closer together in Savannah or smaller in acreage? Or, did the high density of black residents reduce the value of their properties in the eyes of Georgian [white] property assessors? What other factors could have contributed to this disparity?

Plate 56: This data visualization is entitled, "Negro landholders in various States of the United States". The graph uses a series of black and white bars to represent the percentage of black landowners and tenants in selected southern states. Based on the information provided the year, or years, this data represents is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the majority of black individuals living in the identified southern states were tenants, not property owners. The predatory practices of sharecropping in many ways maintained the status quo for white landowners after emancipation, the prevalence of these practices is clearly depicted through this data.

Daniel Lawrence, Updated Plate 27:
Initially, I found this plate to be visually striking in its comparison of occupations among black individuals and white individuals in Georgia (year not provided, likely from before 1900). When this plate is placed next to an identical graph with similar data from 2019, the effect is captivating. The number of individuals in an agricultural occupation has diminished to less than 1% for both black and white individuals in 2019. Also, much like the earlier version of the graph, the 2019 graph demonstrates that occupations among these two groups have more similarities than differences.