 I want to begin by thanking everyone for attending this evening, my many thanks to Ellen as well as Matilda and the Cooper Hewitt for organizing and hosting this event. It is with true, true privilege to be able to speak with you tonight with Lisa about these data visualizations. We alongside Yelfan you with the Cooper Hewitt are co-curating an exhibition opening this November that explores the underpinnings of nationalism and colonialism that shaped the objects of modern design at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Central to the story is the 63 groundbreaking data visualizations produced by the sociologist WB Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University. Synthesizing graphic design with statistical data, these diagrams visualize the social and economic uplift achieved by black Americans across the United States since emancipation, while presenting a biting and nuanced critique of institutionalized racism. I'm thrilled to say that for the first time in over 120 years, the exhibition retarding modern design will give visitors the opportunity to see a selection of the original diagrams created by Du Bois and his students in person. This evening help begin with a brief overview of how these data visualizations came to be shown in Paris. We wanted to look closely at the diagrams themselves and discuss how they were produced and their place within the history of data visualization. Inaugurating the opening of the 20th century, the 1900 Paris World's Fair trumpeted the possibilities of technological aesthetic social and economic advancement to a global audience. In the middle of the Eiffel Tower, nations competed to demonstrate their cultural and economic and thus political power. These are the carefully programmed pavilions of their most competitive industrial arts and reconstructions of native architecture from their colonial holdings. The United States embraced the fair as an important opportunity to showcase the industrial, social and cultural progress it had made over the past century and announced itself on equal footing to national powers such as England, Germany or France. As planning for the American presence at the fair was underway. J. Callaway seized upon the narratives of progress, both the United States and the fair more broadly looked to project in order to claim a place for black Americans. A prominent lawyer, educator, and editor of the DC based newspaper The Colored American, Callaway viewed it as essential that black Americans have a presence at the fair. The previous World's Fairs held within the United States, the 1876 centennial exposition in Philadelphia, and the 1893 Colombian World's Fair in Chicago, largely denied black representation at, or participation in their proceedings and displays. Conclusion from the Chicago World's Fair, for example, drew a damning critique written by Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irving Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Lee Barnett in the form of a pamphlet entitled The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World's Colombian Exposition. Callaway was also deeply concerned about misrepresentation of black life around the world by the white press in the United States. Particularly following the international coverage of the brutal torture and murder of Sam Hose in Georgia in 1899. When soliciting Booker T. Washington, the influential thinker and principal of the Tuskegee Institute for support. Callaway expressed his aims in writing. He wrote, quote, we owe it to ourselves to go before the world as Negroes. Everyone who knows about public opinion in Europe will tell you that the Europeans think us a mass of rapists ready to attack every white woman exposed and a drug and civilized society. How shall we answer these slanders are newspapers they do not subscribe for. We publish books they do not buy them. If we lecture they do not attend. However, thousands upon thousands of them will go and a well selected and presented prepared exhibit will attract attention and do great and lasting good and convincing the thinking people of the possibilities of the Negro quote. With the backing of Washington and just a few months before the opening of the fair. Callaway successfully petition the United States government to include in fund display organized under his direction that would demonstrate the social economic and cultural gains made by black Americans since emancipation. The exhibition envisioned by Callaway would take shape as the American Negro exhibit. We'd be installed in the Palace of Social Economy, a pavilion at the fair dedicated to international social reform movements. The exhibition as organized by Callaway consisted of several principal sections. The first was a display of tools and other agricultural products in swing cases, sent by leading black industrial schools, such as the Hampton and Tuskegee institutes. These displays were in line with Booker G Washington's vision for the centrality of industrial and vocational training in the uplift of black America. The second section consisted of a selection of nearly 250 volumes of black literature, compiled by Daniel AP Murray, assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, who was also responsible for acquiring the contents of the American Negro exhibit for the library in 1901. Finally, Callaway enlisted his old classmate from Fisk University in Tennessee, WB Du Bois to contribute a detailed sociological study of black life in the United States. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. He received a bachelor's degree from Fisk and a second from Harvard, where he studied under the American philosopher William James. Following a two year fellowship at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, Du Bois became the first black doctoral candidate or graduate of Harvard writing his dissertation on the suppression of the African slave trade. Before becoming a professor at Atlanta University in 1897, he conducted a widely influential study of Philadelphia 7th Ford for the University of Pennsylvania, the first such sociological study of a black community in the United States. Du Bois' contribution to the American Negro exhibit was as uncompromising as it was subversive. He and his student collaborators at Atlanta University not only created over 60 data visualizations charting the daily lived experience of black America. They also compiled a rich collection of photographs for of black Americans, as well as a 400 page handwritten transcription of the black codes of Georgia, tracing a genealogy of legal oppression within the state for over a century and a half. Of the data visualizations Du Bois and his students presented two sets of data. The first, the Georgia Negro social study was a detailed case study illustrating the progress made by black Americans over the past 35 years in the state. The second data set, a series of statistical charts illustrating the conditions of the descendants of former African slaves, now in residence in the United States of America, was a broader national survey of the condition of black Americans. While distinct, there were frequent overlaps between the two series. With the title card for the Georgia Negro Du Bois established the central thesis of his research, as well as for the American Negro exhibit itself. In a line that would be made famous three years later in his influential texts, The Souls of Black Folk. He declared quote, the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line and quote. The decision to vibrantly illustrate the data he and his team collected on 23 by 30 inch poster boards drew upon a long tradition of progressive activists and statisticians in the 19th century using such techniques to make visible systemic patterns within society. William Playfair, Charles Joseph Menard, Andre Michel Guari and Florence Nightingale, whose work is discussed in design and healing on view now at the Cooper Hewitt, all made sizable contributions to this history. Work on the project was under an incredibly tight schedule, only beginning in late December 1899, about three and a half months before the fair opened on April 15. Not including the time that would be taken into consideration for actually packing and shipping all of these materials across the Atlantic to Paris. Du Bois relied heavily on his students, particularly William Andrew Rogers, a sociology graduate and instructor at what is now Virginia State University, who is a principal point person for Du Bois. The collective and collaborative all hands on deck endeavor, fundamentally shaped the design of these data visualizations. As Silas Monroe has described, the typography used across data visualizations vary. For most of the diagrams, a lettering guide was used, not unlike this later example produced by Kofo and Esser to standardize the drawing of tight bases. The letters and numbers were limited in the guides punctuation such as percentage marks differ at times from one diagram to the next in the series of statistical charts, the titles for diagrams are drawn inconsistently. Some use mechanically drawn lettering, while other visualizations. Well, for other visualizations letterpress was used instead. Again, the possible indication of the time pressures the team was under. As this chart illustrating population increases, there is a combination of letterpress for the title mechanical lettering for the data along the axes, and a unique handwritten script for the key within the graph itself. In each variation of percentile mark, or stroke of watercolor is the indexed presence of these unnamed students who is Du Bois would later writes completed quote, 50 or more charts and colors with accuracy. With little money, limited time and not much encouragement and quote, such a compressed deadline with such a compressed deadline Du Bois and his team relied heavily on popular atlases US census data. And Du Bois own research, including his work for the Bureau of Labor and the Atlanta conference, an annual sociological conference focused on the study of black life in the United States, organized by Du Bois and hosted by the university. For example, Du Bois follows a model of surveying he used in the Philadelphia Negro to map over three different charts, the population and socioeconomic condition of black Georgians in different towns. In the second half of the 19th century, statistical atlases based on on census data by Francis Amasa Walker and later Henry Gannett emerged as innovative sites for data visualization. Du Bois and his team turned directly to these sources, adapting at times the format and design of certain charts from these atlases, as in the case of this illustration of marriage rates. Du Bois and the students appear to have creatively altered the gridded diagrams of occupations from Walker statistical atlas of 1874 based on the 1870 census into their own unique geometric system of representing black business ownership. While copying or innovating aided expediency, it was not done uncritically by Du Bois and his team. They also challenged the narrative content conveyed by their source material through data visualizations that reflect a remarkable process of intertextual critique. Take for example, the diagram illustrating the gradation of racial identity in the United States by Du Bois, his team. Relations about what constituted blackness were widely debated in the 1890s as Jim Crow laws recently codified by the Supreme Court with Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896 relied upon a binary construction of race to enact their oppressive restrictions. The United States census of 1890 reflects this fascination with categorizing race biologically through hereditary bloodlines. The census introduced categories of quadrant and octroon indicating one fourth and one eighth African ancestry respectively. While echoing the form of a diagram from the 1894 statistical atlas again based on the 1890 census charting population growth based on identity. Du Bois's diagram gradually blends colors from whites to yellow to brown to black, blurring and thus critiquing the binary logic underpinning Jim Crow's racialized hierarchy. The liminality of this gray area is literalized in their use of a gray green font for the category of mulattoes in the center of the graph. In this fine chart tracing financial evaluation that follows precedents from past statistical atlases, the Du Bois team highlights the exponential growth and wealth achieved by black Americans and some anticipation. In this diagram though, they do not retreat from illustrating how the rise of the KKK or entrenchment of Jim Crow laws directly affected the prosperity of black communities over the past 35 years. For example, Du Bois draws upon the history of choropleth maps to use to document the population of enslaved peoples in the United States and puts it through a complete process of inversion. The diagram of Georgia presents in technicolor, a celebration of the property now owned by black residents in the state. In a different chart from Du Bois' series on the right entitled The Rise of the Negro from Slavery to Freedom in One Generation, Du Bois would emphatically write quote, this advance was accomplished entirely without state aid and in the face of prescriptive laws. As polemical as these charts were, they were also visually innovative, often out of necessity to display the collected data legibly. The narrow lane bar graph, for example, creates a looping hypnotic form that would have been essential to grabbing the attention of passersby at the Palace of Social Economy. But it also allows for the sizable disparity between the assessed value of household and kitchen furniture in 1875 versus 1899 and the years between to fit seamlessly together on this limited space of the poster board. So this approach has taken to address taxable property in this reinvented pie chart. In this visualization, the values of taxable property for each five year increment incremental increase increase at a variable rate. By layering all of the data into a bull's eye like display and using the tears to reveal each half decade of growth, like rings in a tree, the diagram unfurls its data narratively. This has also invited visitors to the exhibit to stay longer and better understand the data of displays. Du Bois was keenly aware of the international audience that he was addressing. The series of statistical charts were completed in both English and French, the latter being the lingua franca for most visiting the fair, and included data visualizations, which contextualized aspects of black life for those of European nations. For Du Bois, his project was a global one. Through his involvement with the Pan-African movement, he would attend the inaugural Pan-African Conference in London while visiting Europe and the fair. He saw parallels between racial apartheid in the United States and that of colonialist incursions and rule throughout the globe. The display in the structure of the 1900 World's Fair itself, at which colonial pavilions and the people performing within them catered to a Eurocentric gaze that presented colonized societies as quote unquote primitive, and thus in the need of the civilizing mission of European incursion and control. Du Bois and his team combated myths about illiteracy and birth rates that underpin the social Darwinist studies and racist pathologies that were used to justify such systems of oppression in the United States and around the globe. To end on the question Thomas J. Calloway rhetorically posited to Booker T. Washington, how shall we answer these slanders? Du Bois and his students provided a clear answer. A tour de force, their multimedia display deconstructed the stereotypes, pseudoscientific beliefs, and lost cause narratives used to justify the institutionalization of white supremacy, while giving no ground on celebrating the triumphs achieved by black Americans in the face of Jim Crow at the turn of the century. Thank you so much, and hopefully this will be able to tee off Lenisa's top as well. Thank you that was amazing. Really appreciate it. So Lenisa, we welcome you to to begin. Thank you just bear with me as a formal take your time share my screen. Okay, am I sharing can you see me okay. Yes, we see you and we see your slide. Fantastic fantastic well thank you. Everyone thank you Cooper Hewitt Matilda Ellen, Devin the entire team at the Cooper Hewitt for the good work that you were doing in the field of design, and for providing me with an opportunity to share a few thoughts that I have about Du Bois's data visualizations. I think a good place to start is really with the run up to the Paris exposition. And I think it's important to note and Devin has done some of this work for me already so I'll just do a double thank you. Thank you, Devin is to think about the run up to to to the Paris exposition where Du Bois had been prior to exhibiting the charts and the data visualizations. I'll start with your Du Bois really sort of beginning at Fisk University, HP and HBCU he's there from 1885 to 1888. He then moves to Harvard University. He's there from 1888 to 1890. But in 1892 at 23. After receiving his bachelor's Du Bois travels to Germany to attend Frederick Williams University talk to Berlin, which today is Humboldt University on scholarship. Coming up to this moment Du Bois is immersed in German studies you know he's reading plays by Schiller, and he's read, he's read Kant's critique of pure reason. You know, he's been exposed at this point to Gustav von Schmoller, Adolf Wagner, and Rick von Treitschke and Emets Max Weber, among others, to return to the United States in 1895 to finish a PhD at Harvard. This is an interesting point because the subject of his dissertation is on the suppression of the slave trade to the United States from 1638 to 1870, which becomes his first published book. Tellingly in an excerpt from chapter 12 of his dissertation, which is entitled in essentials on the struggle essentials of the struggle Du Bois writes, quote, it be who's the United States in the interest both of scientific truth, and a future social reform, carefully to understand such chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave trade. The most obvious question, which this study his dissertation suggests is, how far in a state can a recognized more wrong safely be compromised. Finally, for today's discussion Du Bois's dissertation diagrams the evolution of the 1807 act prohibiting importation of slaves to any port in the United States. He charts the 1807 act, beginning with Senator Joseph Bradley Barman 1805 proposition to amend the Constitution and abolish the slave trade. Now, an important side note here is that the Constitution included a provision that empowered states to import and accept migrants whenever they saw fit, and that Congress could not prohibit or restrict state action in this regard until 1808. Now by this point African Americans had already comprised 20% of the US population so one might argue that the act was slow, quite slow, and quite late coming. But for the purpose of Du Bois's effort, the diagram charts the 1807 act from that moment of Senator Bradley's 1805 proposition through to it being tabled for a year, and then being introduced to Congress as a bill in 1806. Du Bois charts readings, amendments and reports as milestones through to the passage of the bill in both houses of Congress, its enrollment and ultimately it's signing into law by the President of the United States on March 2, 1807. Now on the screen and I hope you all can see it clearly without all of the extra things that I see on my screen here but a cursory glance at the diagram suggests that Du Bois may have seen the country, or at least its legislative process, particularly on the topic of slavery as a house divided and two parallel vertical lines consume the majority of the diagram toward the bottom the line waivers in between the two houses and a series of staggered horizontal lines before it jumps to stark angular lines between both houses of Congress. The diagram conveys a slow process leading to a layered and at times somewhat chaotic process of signing the 1807 act into law. Now interestingly toward the bottom portion of the diagram, the lines between the two houses take on triangular shape reminiscent of maps depicting not only the transatlantic slave trade and the middle passage, but other trade routes as well and I'll give people just jumping ahead for a second to to a map showcasing some of this triangular patterning and this sort of back and forth motion of exchange. Finally to the diagram seems to presage or signal one of Du Bois is most provocative quotes about two minutes, which or double miss, which appears in the souls of black folks. And I will quote it here at some length so so please bear with me. And I may have it up on the screen for you to read along with me. This peculiar sensation, this double consciousness this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others of measuring one soul by the tape of a world that looks on an amused content and pity. He never feels his tuness, an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings to warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self conscious manhood to merge his double self into a better and truer self. And this merging he wishes neither of the older cells to be lost. He does not wish to African eyes America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He can bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face. This is a dissertation diagram which I'll just scroll back to. One can wonder whether Du Bois' quote on tuness might also apply to the fractured conduct and consciousness of America as evidenced in this house divided particularly on the topic of slavery. I start with this early background in thinking about Du Bois' dissertation diagram because it captures three critical points that must be considered when looking at the visualizations presented at the 1900 World Fair. The first is that Du Bois is building on these dual identities, this doubleness to orientations that are at odds with each other in many instances and that is captured and reflected in his later work on double consciousness from which I just quoted. And Du Bois leading into the 1900 exposition in Paris. On the one hand, he's drawn from his roots and training in the African American experience vis-à-vis his upbringing and his training at FIS. And on the other hand, he's drawn from his experience as an emerging sociologist steeped in the German tradition based on his early readings and his time in Berlin. So by the time Du Bois lands in, just scroll ahead here, lands in Paris, he's got an agenda set a very clear agenda and the agenda really is to highlight the beauty, the diversity, the strength, the power of African American intellectualism, of African American humanity, and by extension, of course, the humanity of enslaved African peoples. And so alongside the charts that the Devin so beautifully spoke of just a moment ago that were exhibited at the Paris exposition, Du Bois presents 500 photographs, 32 charts that Devin just referenced a few of numerous maps and notably a display of 200 books written by African Americans. Ultimately, Du Bois is exhibiting African American humanity in its finest form, a humanity that demonstrated exceptional intellectualism, exceptional understanding and skill and both visual and written literacies. Now the photographs of a fluent, you know, young African American men and women challenged the dominant perception of the day, which were racist caricatures, you know, which which depicted African peoples peoples of African descent in the darkest imaginable terms. And the second point that I want to call attention to is that Du Bois and sort of exhibiting this this this African and African American humanity is intentionally drawing upon and advancing a legacy of visualizing the African American experience at the turn of the century, stemming from his early dissertation research and then moving into the charts that we see in Paris. And he's drawn on the likes of folks like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and if we were to take it back farther to the continent we could look at the kingdom and other scripts and visualizations, graphics, sign systems coming out of the continent. And then the thirdly, these visualization charts are meant to dispel, as I mentioned a moment ago, these dominant notions of African savagery by inadvertently indigenous African graphic communication systems. They showcase both the intellectual complexities and the capacities of people of African descent. In this context, I'm attempting to broaden examination of Du Bois's charts to include a wider lens through which to view the relationship between the written word and the graphic sign as critical tools of articulation in Africa and its diaspora. And so doing, you know, what Du Bois is doing and in channeling these these these these graphic systems and indigenous technologies at the turn of the century which, you know, again, were were overwhelmingly negative. You know the idea, or the dominant image was that black Africans and enslaved African peoples were considered savages and deliterate without knowledge systems and advanced communication technologies of their own. And these myths were propagated as justification for the ensavement and subsequent colonization of African peoples. And another side note here that I'd like to call attention to that I think is worth noting is that, in fact, Western writing as we know it is a descendant from Egyptian is descendant of Egyptian knowledge systems and communication technologies, mainly hieroglyphs dating back more than 5000 years to the fourth millennium historians and linguists and turn link these hieroglyphs to ancient pictographs and ideograms. Together, these systems shape and influence the development of Hebrew, Arabic, by extension, Greek, Roman Cyrillic. To be clear, all modern scripts that we know of, except Chinese are offsprings of Egyptian writing symbols and graphic design systems. So in other words, it all started in Africa. So there's a there's an interesting irony, and that you know these sort of science systems these diagrams these charts, these written legacies and literacies become the tool to by which to affect a humanity for people of African descent. And the evolution and retention of these technologies, in spite of the slave trade, are evident in the charcoal writings in Arabic on the jailhouse wall in North Carolina where Omar Ibn Said and enslaved African man wrote verses of the Quran and Arabic script, where he wrote letters with diagrams in them, and where later in 1831 he published a 15 page autobiography autobiography also an Arabic script and I'm just going to pause here and flip through some of the images because one thing that I did not mention should is that Du Bois is very strategic and deliberate and what he has on display in Paris. And while there are many images depicting businessmen and churches and homes and and and community settings. A vast majority of these images actually depict libraries and you know people of African descent in and in learning environments in the context of in the process of reading books. So here are a few images. This is an image. These are images of young girls in the process of reading. And then here is an image of women sitting on the library steps at Atlanta University. This this this idea of literacy this representation of black folks engagement in the literary act and the written that in the in the signaling of past practices and the retention of them, and African and African American culture, despite the slave experience of slavery is remarkably significant. And I also mentioned a moment ago, the writings of Omar and then say so I will flip to an image of him here. And you know he's, you know, captured from the synagogue region, put into slavery. He attempts to flee a slavery but is later being enslaved and is later caught and imprisoned in North Carolina, and he begins to write on the jailhouse walls and charcoal and this captures the amazement including the governor. And, ultimately, it leads the way to Omar Ibn Said's ability to tell his own story and Arabic script and in the process, he is writing letters about himself, his culture, his identity and as you can see here, using a diagram to to as a means of expressive culture. These the retention of these technologies are also evident in the works of here, Abdul Rahman, Ibn Ibrahim Sorry, who was also pulled from the synagogue region and enslaved here in the United States and affected, ultimately, his return to Africa, Liberia in particular, not his home but to Liberia nonetheless, through his ability to write his story in Arabic script, and to in fact win the attention of his captors. We can also think of examples in phyllis Wheatley and Frederick Douglas and IDB Wales, among other IDB Wales among others, who each use the written word and visualization to write alternative narratives of the black experience in one way or another, all to the end of executing the freedom. The point here is threefold. First, demonstrations of written and visual literacies have worked hand in hand in the execution of freedom for people of African descent, since they're enslaved in the United States. And secondly, enslaved African peoples drew upon and advanced their own written technologies and graphic design systems to articulate their identity separate and apart from dominant perceptions of African and African Americans prior to during and since the 19th century. Just a little parts here, bear with me. The next turn in my my research on Du Boisish charts that I am unpacking is the color symbolism of them. And so what you'll see here is that without going into too close a reading because some of these charts have already been well read by other scholars in the field. There's this strong reliance, not only in the charts represented here, but throughout the other charts in the collection here at the library on black, red, and green, moving into yellow or gold. It's very interesting and this is this is where my research is is leading me now that the dominant colors and the majority of Du Boisish charts emerge as the chief colors of black liberation in the plan African flag, red, black, green and in some instances these colors in turn become the dominant symbols of black freedom during the 1920s through to the 1960s through to the 1980s through today. The black. And I'll just move to a couple of shots that I grabbed. Again, an independence flag at the bottom and two iterations of the black liberation flag. The black within the context of pan Africanism symbolizes black people. It symbolizes the blood shed by and also shared between African people, and the green symbolizes growth, hope, and accomplishment for black people everywhere. Now recognizing that the flag was created by Du Bois is contemporary the black liberation flag was created by Du Bois is contemporary, and depending upon which scholarly community you engage as rival Marcus Harvey. But that it but that it came that it became the emblem of the pan Africanism and a black freedom the world over just 20 years after Du Bois brought these colors to the world stage and connected them to the black experience in America is intriguing to me. And, and I think that there's a lot of work to be done here and looking at the visual force of the of the flags and the symbolism of them juxtaposed against the charts. I definitely think that they are in conversation with each other and interesting and provocative ways that the charts in many ways presage and and suggest or lead into what we become to appreciate across the global community as the emblem, an image of black freedom in terms of and black liberation in terms of the, the, the color symbolism here. In closing I am positing that Du Bois charts Du Bois charts challenge the violence of the whip lash line by putting forward alternative views of alternative views of African American progress, particularly in the realm of written and visual literacies, legacies and diagrams. The charts engage the color line, certainly within the context of the racial divide in America, but also in terms of their combo color symbolism. Ultimately, all of these lines suggest a turn to the black star line, which is and was always intended to bring African and African Americans and all their beauty, intellectualism and diversity back to the continent. The black star line being both the ship that Marcus Garvey envision for the return of African peoples to the continent, and ultimately the black star line as evidenced in the star of the Ghanaian flag, which was the first country in Africa to win independence. So with that, I will leave it there with hope that my comments and my thinking around Du Bois charts and their significance, particularly within the context of written and visual legacies in Africa and the African diaspora more broadly will excite conversation among us I'm happy to be in dialogue with all of you. Thank you so much. Thank you for that beautiful talk. Thanks so much Lenisa. Wow. So we're going to have some questions which is really exciting I'm going to bring our speakers back into visibility so you can put your camera on and Devin I'm going to pin you here to. Matilda, do you want to start off with a question from the Q amp a. Sure. So we got a question, a very great question. Actually, it's another one. Do you know of other data visualization activists who are living today who have taken the legacy of Du Bois and others to make an impact in similar lines long similar in similar ways. Nice question. And jumping in, you know, the first to the pop to mind, and there's so many, I mean, the work that's been done on these data visualizations this kind of opened up, you know, so many designers and activists to just the profound significance of data visualization as as a way of controlling narratives and and recontextualizing the data that we all kind of consume and perceive. You know, the first names that popped to mind, you know, Mona Chen lobby did a great series of data visualizations in response to Du Bois's work at the House of Illustration in London this was two or three years ago. And it's just like the ester gates who has done a really remarkably beautiful series of works in response to these materials as well, which I think we're up at the was worth F&M if I recall correctly, a year or so ago in an exhibition in 2020. But you know those are two that just popped to mind there's so many more do it all. I'll drink. Thank you. Thank you. Museum. Perfect. So many, so many great activists and designers working in inspired by and in the tradition of Du Bois is activism as well. Lisa, do you have any. Yep, you know, what immediately in addition to of course with Devin shared is the work of Nicole Hannah Jones. You know, she does use data visualizations within the context of sort of mapping school segregation today. And I think that is sort of a direct parallel to, you know, some of the ways in which do Du Bois engaged data visualization so I think she's probably at the forefront of my mind within the context of the question. Great. So I got a few more questions here. First of all, wonderful talk. Sarah lookman says who's the director of the program. And she asked, can you discuss a little bit about the journey the charts took after the Paris Expo, where did they go next. Did they tour anywhere where they collected directly into the Library of Congress and if so, where they exhibited there are stored away until they were rediscovered more recently. I, yeah, I could take so they the, the charts went on an American tour, beginning in Buffalo in 1901 after after the Paris exhibition, and then did a tour through the United States before they were then acquired and entered into the Library of Congress. And to my knowledge and you see you can correct me on this they've been in storage since I these data visualizations are remarkably fragile. They were meant to go on display as ephemeral objects for this ephemeral exhibition. And thanks to the kind of quick thinking of, of Daniel AP Murray, you know acquired all of this material understanding that the preservation of them was essential, but it's, you know, it's poster board from 1999 that was shipped across the Atlantic and back across the Atlantic and then brought through the heart of the United States. You know, so they access to these data visualizations is difficult. And because of just just their delicacy their, their, these fragile, beautiful objects that is unfortunately kind of limited their, their public display. Can you give us a little picture of how they will appear at Cooper Hewitt and what else will be in the exhibition. Yeah, I'm, I'm really excited. You know, we're, Lisa and I working as well as with the often you have really wanted to kind of rethink both how the story of, especially objects of design, coming from the Cooper Hewitt, you know are discussed and detailed and so we'll be presenting these data visualizations in dialogue with the various objects of Art Nouveau and other forms of modernist design at the fair. And as Lenisa kind of alluded to probing the parallel between Du Bois's color line and the whiplash line that guided the audience to finance and influence so much of Art Nouveau's design, and the kind of imperial and colonialist origins of those materials. And then, you know, just having these wonderful dialogues with with these data visualizations and the objects that were created contemporaneous with them. I was moved by Lenisa's quote, the violence of the whiplash line. And I have to say as someone who's, you know, attended numerous design history lectures, no one ever in my experience pointed out that the idea of a whiplash is violent. And it was always presented as an aesthetic idea so Lenisa could you say a little bit more about that and perhaps for people who aren't familiar with how the word is used to describe Art Nouveau formal inventions. Let me take a turn back to a question that was asked I think just a moment ago about the charts themselves you know Du Bois wanted to receive the charts back from the library and for a number of reasons we at the Library of Congress just weren't able to execute on that and they did you know just kind of sit in storage until not too long ago they were digitized and through their digitization they are now widely available to anyone who wishes to land on the LLC website or in the interweb more broadly. And then in terms of you know Ellen your question about the whiplash line. I have to, you know, give a nod here to Devin, because in the early conceptualization of the exhibition that we're working on together. He turned me on to an article that I had never encountered before that took a very close look at the whiplash line within the context of the Belgian Congo. And within of course not just the context of the Belgian Congo but also by turn how it has been the concept of that sort of whip, if you will has been replicated reinvented and recycled in many ways through design practices almost in a sort of oblivious. You know, not intentional but perhaps unintentional unconscious way but still nonetheless signaling is very horrific history coming out of the Belgian Congo and beyond and of course in my conceptualization and and sort of reading and engagement with the article that Devin recommended and Devin I'll just turn to you because it's after five and my memory is slipping a little bit. It's right here. Debra Silverman's Debra Silverman. That's it. Debra Silverman. Thank you brockett horn. But then I start to think about the whiplash line and the dominant sort of image of slashed backs of enslaved African peoples in the United States, who are working hours on end and cotton fields. And to the benefit of a slave master who is by term profiting from that free labor and and in turn the sort of long sort of history. Some of which I've I've I've attempted to document in my presentation of the liberation of those people the whiplash line of course, in a very literal sense, but also in a metaphorical sense I guess is the sort of context within which, you know, I'm thinking about the whiplash line and so when you put that in a conversation with the aesthetics of art nouveau I think there's provocative conversations for us to have for sure. And I'll jump in to say to that this is also all part of what will be on the second floor is retarded modern design, as well as Yelfen exhibition reexamining Hector Gimard's work. So there'll be a wonderful dialogue between Gimard is this adventure of art nouveau, and the entanglement between all of these issues that Lisa is just summarized so beautifully. And you know this this kind of Titan of art nouveau that one thinks about when they see the Paris metro stations and others, and look at how, you know, this kind of entanglement globally of commodity a form of this kind of can so fundamentally affect these, you know, beautiful surface objects but also that there's deeper stories to be told there as well. And if I could just add one point because now don't get Deborah Silverman is just anyway, what another piece of this that is resonating and I hope it's not too much of a teaser here, but you know just the sort of representation and use of flora and fauna and foliage in in art nouveau and really in the arts and crafts movement to you know there's a sort of long history there, but how, when we're thinking within the context of Deborah Silverman you know, there's this signaling of the rubber vine, and to think that hands were were lost for not being able to tap enough rubber to be able to send back to Belgium for the profit of that tiny little space in Europe. When I speak of the violence and some of the flora and the fauna and the foliage seem to to echo and also function and conversation with the whiplash line for sure. When I speak of the violence in part I'm doing so as a trained African is who cannot ignore the histories of exploitation of just devastation to the continent that were born out of, you know, a European colonialism and the on the continent, and also the African American experience of enslavement in the United States. There are a couple of more questions that relate to influence. So one was how accurately we do we know whether Charles Menard or Florence nightingale influenced a voice's approach to visualization. And then also, are there other, you know, charts later on that were influenced by by these charts. So I brought in Menard and nightingale more to just sort of place to boys and his project within a kind of tradition that's emerging in the 19th century. This this zeitgeist that takes over the century as data is being collected and these the use of data in these kind of progressive causes to illustrate the benefit of kind of the systemic structures that they can then illuminate and and help resolve. So in that sense, no, I don't think the boys necessarily looked at a Florence nightingale data visualization per se, and tried to copy it off of that. I think he was more working in his team, especially we're more working with, and what was more immediate atlases, census materials and other visualizations that also nevertheless we're coming out of this similar tradition. And they were scouring. I mean, this is a visual culture at the end of the 19th century. So there was so much material for them to, to adapt to copy to reappropriate to play with and invent from. So in that sense, you know, I think it's it's more loose and not directly that he was copying or inspired by anyone individual. And for later data visualizations, I mean this, you know, comes up who would have seen them at the fair, you know, and then subsequently went on to want to imitate or copy these materials. I can't say. You know, it's more I view these things as products of a time and a certain logic that was embraced by so many kind of early scholars and professionals in these, these, you know, humanitarian professions, or the humanities were working with these kinds of newly invented forms of data sets and visualizing. I think that one of the, the person who asked the question that actually mentioned Edward Tufty, for example, and I don't, I don't know. I mean I've seen Edward Tufty's but I'm not sure, you know, if there's any direct correlation or possibly I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. You mean if Tufty ever has written about Du Bois, or looked at Du Bois has been, you know, influenced his own kind of data visualization. There's some very original constructs like the spiral graph and that exploded pie chart that, you know, so on the one hand Du Bois working with as a sociologist and working with the social science of the day and being very on top of it, you know, and then finding ways to represent data was really fascinating. There's also some questions about production and what kind of materials, what was the process. Devin you mentioned that there was hand lettering and letter press together. Was there a printing facility at the college where Du Bois and his students were working. They would have had access to printing materials, just you know that for the amount of publications the university was doing anyway to have these kind of printing press materials would have been accessible. And I feel like there's moments where I look at these charts and there's so many ways to look at these charts but there's times where I look at them and I think these are students under a deadline. And they're just trying to kind of get through and you could see the passion in the rush and, you know, as they fill in and this is what it will be so wonderful about seeing these data visualizations in the flesh in person is the the coloring in of these bars and diagrams and everything is all by hand. It's all of these students kind of collecting and expressing these these stories about, you know, these black communities that had no other kind of, you know, sizable representation on the scale and to do it with such little time, you know, it's, it's remarkable. So, so yeah, they worked with the poster boards that they would have collected a lot of standard, you know, drawing and lettering guides and other materials that were readily available, especially for sociology students who would present their materials and kind of, you know, public spaces, and then just the group will have the will of graduate students under pressure. I have some of them in the audience tonight. So that's great. People are also curious about the reception like was there a lot of press that it's very interesting that the voice was creating something to counter the dominant representation of African Americans in the press. And how did the press respond to this exhibit. You know, it goes down to almost a prophetic extension of some of Calloway's writing and his letter to Booker T Washington where, you know, it was it was documented in the US survey of the World's Fair. The prominently white press didn't write extensively about it. It was the black press that sort of covered it. It gained a lot of coverage, a lot of positive reviews. But again, it's this, you know, the, the color line that divided the reception of the, the installation as well, which then limited the amount of circulation. I'm so lucky that it was preserved by the Library of Congress and is now available to everyone I put a link in the chat so that you can go and download tiff files graphic designers for all of these graphics and the amazing photographs as well. So maybe one last question. What are some of the key lessons that you think we can learn from Du Bois, and sort of effectively incorporating some of these visualizations into activism like I mean, you know, looking, looking ahead. And do you think this is, was this an important way of visualizing that and can we learn from that. I could jump in on this one. First, if that's okay with you, Devin. Matilda I think yes absolutely you know the boys this whole effort really is about showcasing demonstrating exhibiting and all of this work you know we were talking about the diagram that I mentioned in his dissertation but that moves through to the charts that we see at the World Fair that moves through also to a very sort of prolific writing career through the crises to the publication of his books, and it's just this long sort of effort on Du Bois's part to showcase the humanity. The intellectual heft of black people everywhere and America in particular but everywhere really because you know as we know he makes his home and Ghana. After having traveled to a few other places in West Africa. And so I think when we encounter Du Bois we are each challenged to rethink about to rethink how we think about the African American experience in the United States particularly when it's handed to us in a tiny little package black folks are this or black folks are that and they do this is sort of stereotypical treatment and limitation of the black American experiences is at the heart of Du Bois's this effort and I think you know the the sort of a descendants of Du Bois if you will are sort of echoing the same sort of sentiment it may come out differently it may sound today. Like black lives matter. It may have sounded in a different era like the black empowerment movement and in a different era. Within the context of the politics of respectability, but fundamentally, we are challenged to rethink how we engage the African American experience in the United States and the experiences of people of African descent, the world over. From that moment of the first landing of the enslaved African person in the United States to the present moment today and I think Du Bois is timeless in this regard. That's a beautiful way to end. Thank you both for these amazing presentations and above all for your research that will find a another public forum at Cooper Hewitt, and that people can see these things in person is wonderful. I want to invite you again to check out the other lectures in our series graphic design histories. On March 2nd, you can learn all about emick night coffer from to Cooper Hewitt's amazing curators. We're going to talk about Bauhaus typography at the end of March. And finally visualizing the pandemic, which comes back to these issues and many of those same principles that Du Bois used in his Philadelphia study. We're really key to the founding of epidemiology and the science of how how diseases spread so very fascinating material. Please come see us at Cooper Hewitt. We have beautiful exhibits to share with you and keep keep in touch with us online as well. Again, thank you so much. I just jump in really quickly at the 11th hour to plug yet another Smithsonian Institution. You know, I within the course of my talk with backward, and I think many of the questions have tasked us to look forward, but I think this retention of Africanisms and the turn to Africa. The fight with immense extraordinary writing systems and graphic systems is important work for anybody in the graphic design business to take on today. And so I'd like to call attention to the National Museum of African art at the Smithsonian and to plug a particular exhibition catalog stemming from an exhibition by a former colleague of mine and Christine Mullen Kramer, and the exhibition catalog is entitled inscribing meaning, writing and graphic systems and African art. And so when we start talking about idiagrams pictograms, diagrams visualizations, you know, well before enslaved African peoples arrived to the United States, this is already part of the knowledge system that is embedded and in their intellectual identities. And so if you can turn to that work for more information on the history that I've referenced in the presentation. Great. There's some info about Dr. Kramer for you to all learn more about. That's amazing. Yeah, the whole history of writing we'd love to hear more about your collection at the Library of Congress. So another time. How fantastic. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you to Christine and Courtney for the incredible live captions. We're very grateful to you.