 Hello, everyone. Welcome. My name is Kirsten McNally. I'm an educator here at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Welcome to W. E. V. Du Bois' data portraits, a conversation with Whitney Battledactyce and Bert Russert. A little bit of an echo. I'm sorry. So this program was made possible by generous gifts from the Heartland Foundation and Denise Littlefield Sobel. These gifts have been critical to our work around the exhibition Deconstructing Power, W. E. V. Du Bois at the 1900 World's Fair here at Cooper Hewitt. And the exhibition is on view here at the museum through May 29th. So please do come visit us if you're in the area. Just as a quick access check, this program will run for 75 minutes. So we're going to aim to wrap by 6.45 p.m. Eastern. We're recording this conversation, so please take breaks as you need knowing that you can always return to the recording via our YouTube page and we will send that link out in a post program email. Importantly, we have live captions available for today's program, and you can access them by clicking the CC button for your zoom menu and clicking show subtitle. And we're very lucky to have a good amount of time set aside this evening for Q&A. So this will truly be a conversation with Whitney and Brits are really lucky. And you can use the Q&A box to drop questions in throughout the program, and we'll get to as many as we can. And we also invite you to use the chat as we go. Lastly, I'll be your point of contact today for accessibility. So if you have any issues, you can send me a private message and we'll pause to solve any problems that arise. So with that, I am excited to get started. I'm going to turn it over to Devin Zimmerman, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine and one of the curators of the exhibition Deconstructing Power W. E. V. Du Bois at the 1900 World's Fair. So Devin, over to you. Thank you so much, Kirsten. And thank you so much to Whitney and Brits for joining us tonight. I am thrilled and have had the joy and pleasure of working alongside Linnisa Kitchener, Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, as well as Yauf and you and Christina De Leon at the Cooper Hewitt on Deconstructing Power W. E. V. Du Bois at the 1900 World's Fair, which is just a mentioned design view until May 29. So we're in the last few weeks of the exhibition. The show looks at the 1900 World's Fair as an object of design designed for many different meanings as a carrier of many different politics and agendas, and unpacking the different histories and narratives and stories of design at the World's Fair. By setting the remarkable and amazing data visualization by W. V. Du Bois as students into dialogue with other designers and manufacturers and themes that are drawn out of the fair itself. So tonight I am thrilled to have a wonderful lecture and then subsequent discussion by Britt and Whitney. So Whitney Battle Batiste is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the W. E. V. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst. A native of the Bronx, New York, Dr. Battle Batiste is an activist scholar who sees the classroom and campus as a space to engage contemporary issues with the sensibility of the past. Her academic training is in history and historical archaeology. Her research critically engages the interconnectedness of race, gender, class and sexuality through an archaeological lens. Her research sites include Andrew Jackson's Amritage Plantation, the Abel Smith School on Beacon Hill in Boston, the W. V. Du Bois Homestike or House of the Black Bear Garts in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and community-based heritage sites at Miller's Plantation on the Bahamian Island of Eleuthera. Her books include Black Feminist Archaeology of 2011, W. V. Du Bois' data portraits visualizing Black America in 2018 co-edited with Britt Russert. In her spare time, she is completing a second edition of Black Feminist Archaeology and an edited volume on new directions of research about the legacy of Du Bois with Dr. Richard Benson. In 2021, she became the president-elect of the American Anthropological Association and she will become president of the organization this year. Britt Russert is an interdisciplinary scholar of race, science and visual culture in the long 19th century and an associate professor and undergraduate program director in the W. V. Du Bois department of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Fugitive Science, Empiricism and Freedom in Early African-American Culture of 2017 and published by New York University Press, and the co-editor of W. V. Du Bois' data portraits, which again for anyone who has not picked up is just a phenomenal resource and such an important text for and about Du Bois' data visualizations, published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2018. Fugitive Science received sole finalist mention for the Laura Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association, as well as an honorable mention for the MLA's Prize for a First Book. Russert is currently completing a book about William J. Wilson's African-American Picture Gallery, an experimental text from the late antebellum period that imagines the first museum of black art in the United States. In 2023 and 2024, she will be a fellow in the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. So again, it's with great pleasure. I welcome Britt and Whitney to present today and look forward to the discussion that follows. So thank you all for joining. Thank you and good afternoon. I think we're going to start with the basics about the data visualizations and actually give a teeny bit of background about kind of how this came together and what I think both of us didn't actually expect to happen. And I don't really believe in accidents. I think that it was, it was just supposed to happen. I had literally a meeting with the editors at Princeton Architectural Press and they had just left the Du Bois Center where I am right now. And then I had a meeting already scheduled with Britt and she came in and I was super excited about these infographics and this is kind of on the tail end of kind of the reemergence of these images on Twitter. They were all over Twitter. They were on social media. And it was something, the colors and the, not just the content but the colors and the and realizing that these infographics these incredibly designed and aesthetically pleasing. All of this material was from 1900. And so with this, it kind of came together. I'm an archaeologist. Britt is a historian and at the same time, understanding that we were looking at different or for different reasons, just completely compelled by these images. And for me, you know, it was, it was the colors it was, it was, but also, and Britt bringing it up. Who did these, right, how these were students this points to the amazing work that was happening at Atlanta University at that time in terms of really immense and incredible sociological study that was going to be on a global stage, showing the idea of showing the progress quote unquote progress of African Americans in the United States in the rural South since slavery. So we always like to open with the actual all of the visualizations here, and we'll look a little bit closer at some specific ones, but we just wanted to start off with a very basic overview. Kind of to wet your appetite for what we're about to do. So go to the next slide. So here. The ideas behind why. How do I say the ideas behind the color of these and what the information that they're conveying is is what is the information that we're learning from these visualizations. I want to stress that we need to understand do boys is pretty recent to Atlanta University at this time. It is 1899, and he is actually, he has just finished. You all may know the Philadelphia Negro, which was the first in depth sociological study of African Americans in an urban setting, I would say any setting, and in using what we will consider now today, modern sociological techniques and methods and research But here, what what we want to demonstrate is that, or what to convey to you is that if you look at to the right or, I'm sorry, I think to the to my right. Where there's two maps the Negro population of Georgia by counties. What is happening here is that, if you think about this on a world stage you're talking about 1870 and 1880 this is way before do boys delves into the work that becomes black reconstruction. What we're doing here is setting up is setting the stage for not only discussing the color line, but looking at the ways in which over time since slavery, right, the United States has a shift. Basically, it has a shift in terms of labor, it has a shift in terms of where African Americans are located. And what we see is that over time. African Americans are purchasing property African Americans are opening businesses African Americans are attending historically black colleges understanding that this is still a moment of segregation. Do boys received his PhD from Harvard. It was not a common thing for African Americans to be in predominantly white institutions. So this is the emergence of a moment when you're looking at the span of time between 1865 to 1899 well 1898 1899. So we can go to the next slide. And one of the things that are one of the aspects of the exhibit that is so stark and so different from what has been seen in the past is this idea of seeing African Americans in a very different light. We're moving away from the concepts of seeing African Americans within the context of slavery as the only means to understand the black past in this country, right. So here you have for women who are sitting on the steps I'm pretty sure this is in DC, and this is associated with Howard University. So although the actual data was collected from Georgia, rural Georgia. The truth is that the pictures that the visual parts of the visuals were from Hampton Institute Howard University, Fisk University Atlanta University, and these were showing, and we'll see a couple of examples of seeing African Americans in a very different context. And I want to stress the fact that during the 1900 Paris exposition. We're also talking about the fact that there are still exhibits that are dedicated to human zoos. So we're looking at the fact that we are in some ways do boys is using this particular exhibit to push back against the idea of kind of a racialization right the idea that we are not a race of powerful people we are not a race of progress right we have to be helped across to the other to the other you know to kind of after slavery right, but the examples are that, for example Fisk University where Du Bois attended himself right after high school was opened in 1865. So from the time the moment that slavery was ended, alright, or slavery ended. Education was something that was sought out by black Americans. It was not something that was far removed from possibilities, and I'm not going to get into the town to 10th right now. But talking specifically about seeing the images of black men and women in classrooms in training areas in front of homes they owned. All of these were extremely rare in the United States, let alone on a global stage and in Paris or Europe. Britt, do you want to, I'm just going to ask, and I'm asking everyone to tolerate my voice for a lot of this. Britt is recovering from COVID. So we are we are in this together and we always have our backs and fronts and side, but I know that specifically, this is one of the images that Britt holds very dear so I'm wondering if you want to delve into this and then I jump right back in. Yeah, sure. Thanks. Maybe I'll say something about this image and then the next season. There's these two title images that represent, you know, two kind of key aspects for the exhibition I saw someone in the chat raised a question about where is the exhibit, and I just wanted to specify so there's an exhibition currently at the Cooper Hewitt where you can see some of these original infographics, but when we are using the language of exhibit we're talking about the original exhibition of these images right so do boys. I was asked by Thomas Calloway, who had been charged with putting together this American Negro exhibit that's what it ended up being called for the Paris Exposition as part of the American section or the American contribution to the Paris Exposition, and he reached out to an old friend from Fisk. Thomas Calloway had gone to Fisk with Du Bois they had been, you know, college buddies, and asked him if he would be willing to make a contribution and so Du Bois's idea here was to contribute this sociological study which would include the all of these photographs and also these amazing infographics. So that was really interested in showing the progress that African Americans had made since emancipation in 1863. So, again, just really interesting I think thinking about the idea that Du Bois who was making these images at the turn of the century in a kind of like a research lab right he was the kind of the leader of this research team. Including students who were involved field researchers and so it's a real collaborative effort but I just from the beginning wanted to say that you know I think he often had two audiences maybe even three audiences in mind right. He knew that he was creating these infographics for an international audience so thinking about these images and representing African Americans again like as Whitney said on a global stage. So he's thinking about this. He's thinking about an international a European audience, but he also was really interested in sending a message to the US government right this is a period during the age of Jim Crow. This is the era of segregation. This is a time when slavery has ended and yet racial discrimination pertains across the nation. Du Bois is trying to send a message about the progress and that the development of African Americans since emancipation to an international audience but he is at the same time, making a searing critique of the status quo in the United States. So here I think it's really interesting to see that. So this is the one title image and this is one of the infographics that was actually mounted on the wall and you're going to get to see an image in a minute from the from the from that space from the exhibition space at the at the Paris expo. So this is one of the two title images and you can see it says the Georgia Negro a social study. Du Bois gets the top call here right even though, you know he had a team of researchers it's important that he, his name is sort of flagged here, and is prominently, but I just wanted to point out that Du Bois makes this decision to highlight the slave trade. And this is a really interesting right image of the globe. It resonates with some contemporary data visualizations of the slave trade there's one on slate that I often teach that has an interesting residence to this so there's actually a really interesting history just to visualizing the slave trade. And I think it's really interesting that Du Bois here again in focusing on black modernity and focusing on what's happening with black Atlantans and African Americans in Georgia. He right from the beginning of the study is like reminding his viewers and his readers that the shadow of slavery still means large. And so I think this is just a really kind of great example of that. And so before we go to the next slide Brit, I also want to remind us that the that this is the first time we see the line, the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. And this is before it appears in the souls of black folk. So this is something that is kind of developing. And this is the first time it's like public so I just absolutely thank you for that Whitney. So that line, the problem with the 20th century is the problem of the color line I think many of us, when you know even those of us who are Du Bois scholars first encounter this term usually from the souls of black folk Du Bois is famous text from the turn of the 1903. But when we started doing this work, I think we were both kind of blown away to see this line on this infographic because then we realize oh wow this quote is something that Du Bois had clearly been developing and working with before the souls of black folk. Thank you for pointing that out. Next slide. Thank you. And then this is just I won't say much about this image. This is sort of the second title image for the series. And, you know, I think this is really a great infographic because where is that first image that we looked at really makes a lot of the credits Du Bois as the sole author to this series. Here we can, we're able to see that it's actually a more collaborative enterprise you can see it says, prepared and executed by Negro students under the direction of it Lanny University, and Lanny University, United States of America. And I also just wonder what it meant for, you know, viewers, fair goers in this moment. There's probably people who had no idea that there were historically they were that there were black colleges and universities in the United States right so even that kind of information I think is going to be. And I also just wanted to point out here that you can see that that this is a bilingual infographic right and so the inclusion of French here is clearly another way in which Du Bois and his students were attempting to hail and an international audience to the infographics. Next slide. So here, as you can see, this was and there and in a few minutes we'll see also kind of the actual map of the makeup of the, the building in which this exhibit was. Okay. I also want to acknowledge the fact because he keeps making comments that Du Bois is a great grandson Arthur McFarland the second is is watching us right now so it's cool. Hi Arthur. So, right here as you can see. Not only do you have images of people, but if it imagine again I want to remind you about the exhibit of human zoos, right looking at Africa as, quote unquote the dark continent, thinking about the ways in which Africa is then being addicted and and continued to be seen, not only by the by in the United States but in terms of Europe in the Western world. And here you have this exhibit. And if you look at the volumes of literature. You have poetry, fiction, biographies, all of these were done by the hands of black Americans, right. So he's not only showing the visualizations. He's also showing art, he's showing sculpture. He's showing literature. And as, as Britt mentioned, you kind of kind of see centers or central to what we're looking at is that infographic of the transatlantic slave trade which we which we were discussing, again like against the wall right then there was a way in which you could take, you know, move these images so that they were kind of in a folded, not folded but I'm not an exhibit person, but you could actually see the different ways in which you could assess this material in order to put this amount of stuff in such a condensed area. And I think that it was, it was, it wasn't to prove certain things, but it was to demonstrate just the sheer volume of creativity that was coming from the hands of black Americans. And it's kind of the lighting is kind of off but actually in the center of it the the portrait in the center is actually a portrait of Booker T Washington, who as many as some of you may know or many of you may know that this was Booker T Washington and Du Bois, not the best of friends kind of didn't see eye to eye. But Booker T Washington's endorsement of this exhibit added to the ability for the the funding to go directly and be used solely for this exhibit right so this this exhibit was funded by the black government and brought to Paris and I think that it is a testament to kind of the collaborative effort, not only of the students not only of this of the professors and research colleagues at Atlanta University, and across historically black colleges, but this was a collective effort by black Americans to bring all of this together and bring it to Paris. So we can Okay, we can go to the next slide. Um, so this is usually, I also want to historically contextualize what's happening right now. This is a really tumultuous time in the United States we're talking about the ending of reconstruction. The construction has been over for a little bit, but we're talking about an escalation of violence against black Americans through lynching with the ideas behind. This exhibit is also a testament to Du Bois is shifting from being data centric right data is going to save the world like data is going to save black Americans. So if I can prove and show you that it is through the racialization and the segregation and the ways in which black Americans are being slighted and pushed to the side, as opposed to participating in a direct democracy, right, which is what we're supposed to have in the US, we will be we can be anything we want to be as a nation. Yet this there was a horrible murder of a man named Sam hose in Georgia right outside of Atlanta, and this particular event profoundly affected Du Bois. And why this is a moment and and now don't change this. Actually, we can change to the next slide. It's better to look at the next slide. Thank you, it's better. So, in this moment, Du Bois and his new his young wife Nina, she had been in. She went with Du Bois to Philadelphia, but they were a new they were a new couple. She did not know anyone there they met at Wilbur Forest in Ohio, and imagine her being transplanted because he's a researcher and he got this postdoc at the UP and he is then engaging in research trying to finish or complete the Philadelphia Negro, he didn't have a team with him he it was basically a solo project. And if you've ever seen the Philadelphia Negro, it is a huge volume. I'm sure that Nina was swept up in trying and I mean imagine someone doing that amount of research by themselves they're completely consumed by that by that work. So when he doesn't get any kind of position at you pen. He, he takes up position at Clark. I mean sorry, it's now Clark Atlanta at Atlanta University, and then they move to the south. Again, Nina is not a Southern girl this is something that is is very new for her. And you have segregation at its finest, or maybe that's not the right words to say, but you have a serious Jim Crow regime in a place like Georgia. The boy's is born, and unfortunately, he passes away at 18 months. This is devastating for this young family, but it's also a reminder, because what he was sick with, he could have survived if this color line, right, this inability to take your child to a hospital, because it's a Negro, right. The idea of this, you know, Atlanta University, being so promising in terms of the future for Du Bois is research, get it held tragedy, very soon after he got there. So this happens in April of 1899. The lynching of Sam hose happens in May of 1899 on his way to deliver an editorial what we would call an op ed piece to the Atlanta Constitution. He is walking toward the offices and learns that the knuckles of Sam holes who has just been lynched are on display at the butcher shop on the very street where he's walking. And he says that that information literally stops him in his foot and stops him in his tracks. And what he says at that point is at that point I decide that propaganda. That propaganda is the way when I say propaganda I'm not talking negatively I'm talking about data is not enough. If we prove to you that we can do a B and C, then we should be free. It's more than that it's about showing demonstrating really looking at the ways in which black Americans have and are continuing to contribute to the wealth. And to the prosperity of the United States. And for him it these two deaths coming so quickly. I believe is is a very telling moment in terms of the shift and again 1903 the souls of black folk comes out which is a serious and there is a chapter called the passing of the first born, which is a very amazing and emotional chapter about the bitter loss of losing his son, because his son never had to live life behind the veil. So he was saved, but he was innocent, and he never got to live so it's a bitter sweet moment. And it's a moment that I think changes the trajectory of Du Bois is focused, we can go to the next slide and let's break you had something. I want to say I just think you that's door sizing this. I mean, and just giving us some details about the tragedy that he was living through at the same time that he was conducting this really groundbreaking research and putting together this, you know, it was a hustle to get to get these images and, you know, he and his team did not have much time at all only a few months basically to, to put this all together so just to think about him working so hard on this and then just being surrounded by this tragedy and just actually grieving. So I just thinking about grief as a backdrop for the infographics I just think I just thank you for that because I think that's a really powerful way to think about them. We have the Paris exposition, and it's good to see the grandeur of it, right, because again, you're talking about this is on a world stage and I just have the grandeur of it and then we can move on to the next slide. So, when I told you about kind of the schematics of the building in which the exhibit was in. If we look at the, as soon as you walk in where you at the bottom of the of the of the picture, you can see. Thank you. The Negro exhibit Negro exhibit and you're talking about. If you think about you walking into a building. It's the first thing there, which is, to me, the placement of this, even if the designers because I always sometimes I've been thinking I've go back and forth about, well as it's done on purpose so you just walking by it you know, were they aware, but to be honest, to me the placement of this is so the prominence of it, I think, led to the ability for everyone that walked into this building to see it, and it to be unavoidable. And also do boys is that the this exhibit, one, almost every prize in the at the World's Fair, at this year, because of the sheer, the volume, the intensity the beauty of this exhibit I think, I think it was. It doesn't turn way ahead of its time, but I think that it was, it was something that would be visually amazing if it was in a modern sense, and this is in 1900. Can we point again with the with the pointer. If you look, yes, right in this front area, where it says Isle of Palace, is that yes Isle of Palace. And you can see it says Negro exhibit. Yes, yes, I love Alice. Yes. Okay. And actually, if look on the, on the left side or one side is is Germany, and on the, the other side of it is Holland. I still, I still want to say that we're talking about Europe and here's United States in the middle, but this placement of this exhibit is, I'm still blown away by the fact that it is, but I mean it's separated, but that almost gives it a presence of its own, which I think actually added to the ability for people to see it and engage with it before they engage with anything else that was in that was associated with the United States exhibit. And I also just add, you know, I know we have a few other slides that we want to get through. I mean, I think one of the goals of these world spares was to establish the kind of like industrial and modern prowess of nations, European nations, the United States, right. This is a kind of moment of trying to show off the, the kind of wonders of industry and art and creativity and, and, and for these nations to really establish themselves as being like on the cutting edge in terms of technological modernity, scientific progress, all of these things. So if you think about this pavilion, and you see Holland in Germany, and then you see that then there's an exhibit that's not just from the United States but that is specifically African Americans that's also Du Bois and Callaway, and, and you know the the organizers of this of the American Negro exhibit, making a claim for black Americans modernity and their place, their deserving place with within this milieu. Next slide. This is a picture. This is located. Two floors up from where I am. Yes, to two floors up from where I have right now three floors. And in the Du Bois papers, this is Du Bois is past, I mean, the exhibit identification. Card. Yes, exhibitors card. And I do, I do want to emphasize that Du Bois, the monies that were pulled together for this exhibit to to to get all of this materials together. And remember, they have to be shipped to Paris from Georgia. Not only that. You have the fact that it wasn't a lot of money but every cent went into this exact, I mean basically the exhibit. Now Du Bois being the person that he was that had to make sure that everything was in its place, right. And he's the curator of this exhibit. He has to everything has to be the way it should. And so he had no money left to get to Paris. So he had to literally go to Paris on steerage which is at the bottom of the boat because he had to be there and it's important to be there, but he felt it was more important for these materials to take precedence over his own comfort, you know, but and I like the fact that we've included this one as well, because if you look at this, it's a little bit clearer. And so some of those infographic, the two infographics that I mentioned earlier, and you can kind of see Booker to Washington a little clearer in the center. So he's given a prominent prominent placement in this exhibit. So I just say, if we combine that exhibitors card, I think that's such an incredible image of Du Bois. And if you kind of think about that image and then this is another image this is Du Bois in his top hat and coattails at the Paris and you can, I think it's here it's easy to see here visually that this trip was really important for Du Bois is beginning to establish himself as not just an American intellectual but also a cosmopolitan intellectual a transatlantic intellectual a pan African intellectual. So this trip, you know, again, like the funding came from the US government, but it was like as Whitney said, was only able to cover the actual materials and for the actual exhibit it did not provide for the actual transport of Du Bois and the other people to get to Paris so Du Bois had to scrounge up his own funds in order to make this trip. And I think here and we see him like dress the way I mean Du Bois really cared about his physical appearance and he always looked dapper he always was put together. And I just think, you know, it's just important to think about that this exhibition was a really played a really important role in terms of his, his becoming of the intellectual, the huge towering intellect that we know today. And I do want to say that, you know, we have to also keep in mind for those of you who don't know, while Du Bois was at Harvard. Paul Nadar is, is he a famous photographer I don't know. Okay, thank you. So the fact that Du Bois while at Harvard. What did study in Berlin, which was extremely, it also very much shaped his perspective of the world. He was, you know, a black boy from Great Barrington, which there was not a lot of boys at school that looked like him. He always wanted to go to Harvard. Instead, there was a collection and a collective effort of the townspeople because he graduated high school at the top of his class valedictorian. And they pulled together the funds to send him to Fisk University. Like I said before, opened in 1865 is a historically black college it is still opened. While he went there. I mean, it was, it was seriously, it was seriously, it was obvious that he was when he called himself thoroughly New England, which mean that he didn't understand the nuances of the ways in which black Americans in the South speak to each other or acknowledge each other. He was teased a little bit for a he had an accent. I live in, we live in New England. So sometimes people don't think they have an accent here, but they do. And so he would, he would often be, you know, like he was learning how to be around black folks and in the South Nashville, Tennessee is very much Southern in comparison to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. And so, but when he was in Berlin he says, I felt fully human two times in my life. I was a little boy in great Barrington. And when I was a student in Germany. And so we needed to understand that he felt as if he was a scholar of sociology scholar and sociology was extremely new. He went to Germany and studied with those who created this discipline and came back to those who had also taken classes with these founders right and these German institutions. And so imagine him having that knowledge and then having to learn and be that student to professors that had taken similar classes that he had taken. And so, understand that he is a intellectual in every way that saw this exhibit. And therefore he was a part of this exhibit that he knew would have an audience in a place like Paris. So I just wanted to also say that this was not his first time to Europe he had been there, and, and, and had, you know, I mean, Berlin was a place that he returned to quite. I'm not quite often, but a few more times. And then after this Du Bois has always been a man of on a global stage, going across all over the world throughout his life. So I just got to introduce this because I tried to put this earlier. This is a panoramic from the actual 1900 exposition. And this is a, this moving sidewalk that seems to be extremely popular. And it's just interesting to look at this footage of just people taking in the wonders of modernity. As Britt was discussing industry, modernity. I mean, this is modern. I mean, I feel like it's moving really slow, but imagine in 1900, you've never seen a moving sidewalk. This is serious. This is amazing. Yeah, and, you know, film early film. This was a really important moment. This is the, you know, 1900. This is the beginning, the beginnings of film. And the Paris Exposition was a really important showcase for some of these early films. This is an Edison film. And I thought it would be interesting just to show you quickly because you can, you get a sense here of like the kind of culture of promenading at the fair. You can see, think back to Du Bois in his, in his suit in his Sunday vest and then look at everybody dressed up here so the fair is a place to see and also to be seen showing social status through dress. This is also an age of the beginnings of conspicuous consumption, right, that kind of so in all of those things really matter in this kind of the world of the fair. And I also just wanted to just to just to kind of have a sense of like, well, you can see what a white space it was. And you can really as you see everybody going by right we know that some African dignitaries and officials and people from across the diaspora did tour the the fair we know that some of those folks saw the American Negro exhibit exhibit, but still it would have been pretty incredible to see someone like Du Bois walking through this crowd. Thank you. So, this made it to the cover of the book and and I'm biased because this is probably my favorite image. And I say that because and it seems you know all kitchen furniture. Okay, let's think about it. Britt just mentioned a lovely term archaeologists love this term conspicuous consumption. And in a, an age of fast fashion and disposable everything right and we're suffering from this from the consequences of this now. There's a carious relationship between black Americans who, let's face it were one time property, becoming free becoming a part of the labor force, and being able to participate in consumer culture. Being able to buy to consume to have to have the money to, then you can also accumulate stuff, which could in some ways create a sense of equality. I know it's a stretch, but please understand. It's kind of that term and I hate this because my grandparents names were Jones, but it's like keeping up with the Joneses right. If one person gets an SUV in their driveway, you have to get one and then the person next to you has to get one, and so on and so forth. So if you look at this, it starts out in the year 181875, which is depicted by the color pink, the shortest part of this circle. We have 1890. So we go from 21,000 to $498,000. That is a huge jump in the amount of or the assessed value of household and kitchen kitchen furniture owned by black Georgians at this moment, and it continues to increase all the way to $1.4 million. And I think that that is a testament to the the power of capitalism, like the power of consumption and I, and I also want to talk about the, the, the aesthetics, and the color and the, and the movement of this circle, because it's depicting more than just oh that's a nice circle it's colorful, but it actually is looking at the increase of African Americans participating in this new, this new consumer culture right this new, this new a factory builds it. If you have a catalog, you can put your money in an envelope and send it away. Guess what money is green, it is not black it is not white, it is green. So therefore you two can participate and, you know, outfits your home with the same things that anyone else can. So that was just my archaeological moment. I just wanted to add, I guess from my like lit studies, aesthetic point of view, just thinking back again to the prominence of moving images at the fair. This is one of the, there's several infographics that to my mind seem to want to move right if you think about the swirling image. Think about Whitney pointed out those movable transports those those wall mounted boxes that you could like, you could actually move on the wall and the exhibit so just thinking about the thought put into movement here I think someone in the chat put dynamism I think that's exactly right these are really, really, really dynamic images. Next slide. And we also have black and white I mean this is, you know, we have a variety of. You know, if you look at this, this is about property owned by black folks in Georgia, and the, and it's also broken and if I if this is very interesting, because in this diagram, you don't only have like the year, the dollar amount. But if you look at the, the categories and the, the, my, I didn't have COVID and my, I'm having brain fog, but look at the, the kinds of things political unrest, cool. Pluxism, financial panic lynched lynched disenfranchisement and prescriptive laws rise of the new industrialism the this to me is a very different way to graph and chart this is within a graph of property ownership. In town and city, but look at the other factors that are in this infographic, it is there is a lot more going on than simply counting the amount of property owned by black people in Georgia. Yeah, and this is just revolutionary showing that there is a relationship between this, this particular data set and broader social political and economic causes. Yes. And this is Du Bois again going back to Whitney's point about Du Bois himself having a critical approach to data right this is him even in this infographic, showing us that that data is constructed right that this is not, this is not an objective truth. This is there's been that this is constructed and it's related to social, political and economic forces. Next slide please. This is an interesting slide because it's about the mortality of American Negroes and and in terms of this one. There's there's I feel like there's a lot going on, not just. So you're looking at different spaces, right or different spaces in the sense of US US cities. And again I feel like this kind of harks back to his work in Philadelphia, because you're also dealing with class here you're dealing with mixed race, I mean, there's a lot going on even though there's only literally two colors here, and five lines. Yet, underneath, you look and you see, all the way, all the way toward the, the smallest yellow line, or yellow bar, you have third. 30th Ward better class. Seventh Ward mixed class fifth Ward slum. Then we have us cities and then simply us. It's not data, as in data only, right. It is data that is also contextualizing what is happening socially. And someone asked a question about accuracy. That's very interesting because I feel like the fact that the data is coupled with social and political implications. The data sometimes gets questioned. The data is the data, it is counted. It is collected. It is done by 250 students who were working on this. And across the, I mean, this is data. The data is contextualized and it's couched, and he's looking at a number of factors that contribute to the mortality of black Americans, and dare we talk about the mortality of black women right now, who are dying during childbirth, who are dying during childbirth, we're talking about a cross class, right, we're talking about a serious, this is not something that has gone away, right, whether it's our healthcare system, whether it's all the, these are truths that are based on data that are then pulled out to remind people that we're actually talking about human beings. Absolutely. And this again is a moment when sociology is new and Du Bois is a pioneer and so far as he's actually collecting data and using empirical research. Alden Morris who contributed to our book has an amazing book called The Scholar Denied that talks about, you know, Du Bois was entering into this field in a moment when sociological theories were were extremely abstract. They were social Darwinists, they were, they were, they were not actually grounded in data. So it was that, you know, I think we also do want to just point out that it was really revolutionary that Du Bois and and his team were using this way because it really, it would have just started to be to happen in this field. I think that I think that we need to kind of move on to Q&A right I don't know. Kristen do you want to just maybe go through the final slide so folks can see the final images but I'm, if you're okay with it Whitney I think we can close up and transition to some questions. Well I'll I'll jump in and just quickly thank you both for bringing such clarity to Du Bois has lived experience and the context around these data visualizations which is just they're they're fundamentally remarkable. And so powerful. I still kind of mesmerize constantly every time I see them. Could you, I think one of the questions just to sort of throw the first at both of you is about this kind of data collection and you know I think this might be a great opportunity to talk about sort of the Atlantic conferences and some of these sources I always empathize with Du Bois and his students as like a municipal graduate student who's given like two months and impossible task and said go by the professor. So if you could just jump in and maybe clarify some of the the census material and other other things that they would have been drawing upon, including the conferences or Du Bois will Yeah so they were using a range of sources they were using data that came from the state. They were doing their own research there was my understanding is that there were you know I think students doing some field research and collecting data that way. And this was also a time when the US government was actually had done, basically done some contract work with Du Bois and so he had been already producing this kind of data on, you know, statistical data on rural black populations, especially in the US south. And so, you know, early, early on, I think there was a moment at least I won't speak for Whitney but I would I thought that the data sources came from a source external to Du Bois and his team. And I think they were using a range of data like they were using census they were using, but, but some of the data that came from the state actually originally came from Du Bois and his team. Does that make sense. They actually were producing this the statistics, some of the statistics that were that were being kind of claimed by by the state by the US state. Yeah, Whitney do you want to add anything. No, we can, you know, we can just. Yep, you got it. We have another question from. And Devin you mentioned this but you know this these studies were part of the Atlanta University studies so if in those have all been. I think many of them have been digitized so if you're interested in learning more about this research and looking at some of the original sources, just go on Google and you can download some of those reports so this was part of a huge project at Atlanta University to kind of collect data on African Americans at the turn of the century. And yeah, I actually do have something. You know, early on when I when I started to really want to focus on slavery in the South that you know aspects, you know from archaeology from an archaeological stance. Like, you know, I understood about X slave narratives, and I don't use that word SLA ve but that's exactly what they're called so that's what I'm going to use. And these are, these are interviews by people who were children during the ending of slavery and they were interviewed after. But the truth is, Fisk University did that before the government did so the WPA employed people to go out and to get these interviews from these folks who were elderly. Now, but they were children, you know that that might have memories of you know firsthand memories of slavery. If you look at the Fisk interviews that are collected by a man named Raywick or a W I CK. They are very different. Right. So when you have a white for a white person coming up to your door and knocking on your door and asking you questions, it's really interesting. Not as is not interesting. Of course the questions are and the answers are going to be different. Right. The comfort level, the ability to answer the question and collect the data in a way that is not the census taker knocking at your door and then making a decision about what race you are, because we're taught and if anyone does data, I guess you know that the census is a little problematic right. And I have to admit that I in 2000 I worked for the I was I worked for the census, and I had no clue how much power that person that collects that census data actually has. So I just want to put that out there because this idea that where is this coming from you're talking about the government looking to people who could actually go into the places where they could not go to collect data for whatever reason good or bad, but this was something that wasn't rare and again just like many folks in the United States and the global stage didn't even know that historically black colleges existed. At that point they weren't historically black colleges they were just black colleges, right, and they were producing the scholars who were then teaching at black colleges. So, and and also teaching at places like the Rosenwald schools and and schools throughout the south, because the only place that black teachers could get positions were in black schools in a segregated system. Okay, so jumping to another question from Becky balloon, although the purpose of the infographics in the exhibit were to demonstrate the progress advancement and achievements of black Americans. Do we find individualizations in particular evidence of the oppression of black people, I mean I suppose this kind of touches on that one day the visualization already seen. In other words, do we see the negative impact of Jim Crow a criticism of the American government state and national in the data presented. You know, I think even just the graph of, you know property ownership in city and town and and seeing those lynching, you know, coup clannism that's interesting. And those different, and it's you're talking about the beginning of the rise right of the KKK in this moment. And so, I feel like within that data and if you look again through the very through the different images, there is a lot of commentary through the data, and I want to say threaded through the data, not to replace the data, but threaded through the data, in many ways to not only contextualize, but to say that what has happened, despite the, the prevalence of Jim Crow segregation and violence against black people in the United States at that time. Yeah, I think I think the one that comes to mind that it is the most overt is the data visualization the rise of the Negroes from slavery to freedom in one generation, where he writes this was accomplished entirely without state aid, and in these descriptive laws. I mean, there's no, no pulling punches on that one. Yeah, one of the things about the images is it's like, they continue, like they continue to show and say over and over again, look at all the progress that has been made. Could you imagine how much progress we would have made if we had had any assistance from the US government or so I think, yeah, I think it's just a really powerful balancing act that they're doing through the infographics. Yeah, I do, I do, I see a comment and a graduate student at fifth University, and me mentioning the Rosenwald schools first of all I'm a graduate proud graduate of historically black college Virginia State University, but also my grandmother went to a University of Rosenwald school in North Carolina. So, and at fifth University, other Rosenwald school papers, just saying, our historically black colleges have the most incredible archives, and we need to invest and and think critically about this at UMass Amherst, but really think about the, the kinds of contributions that historically black colleges have been making to American history, and American memory and American financial stability, if we are stable. Yeah, I'm gonna stop because I'm getting political. I have another question from Christine Bergen, who's asking kind of about visitor ship to sort of summarize you know is looking into whether or not someone like Richard Stein, who visited the fair would have seen the Du Bois exhibition. Do you have any sort of reference in your research to attendance or stories about people's experience of the exhibition, and then a shout out for terrific book and great talk. Thank you. I mean, this is the thing I want to, I hope you'll tell us more about this is the question of audience of who saw the infographics it's so hard to pin down, but it's so tantalizing. You know, we, we talked a bit about the hurried schedule that Du Bois, you know, was on in terms of putting together this exhibition we also had a very. You know, we did not have a ton of time to put together this collection. I've come to really value it because it's been kind of amazing to do events like this and to continue to have the conversation and think, you know with others. For me that question about audience like who saw the images and how did they influence people that to me is still a huge question I want to know more I mean that's where we would need to do, you know, think about archives, letters diaries people who recorded recorded their visits right. I would think even like personal pictures I mean I don't need like those things yeah I think there's a lot more to say about that. And also of course this question of like these data visualizations that look like works of avant garde art from like 20 or 30 years later right so it is even just as a speculative exercise really fascinating to think about what young modernist may have seen this group of images from this group of African Americans at the turn of the 20th century. So I think that digitization and kind of a collective hive mind of the internet world will hopefully pay dividends in the future. Yes. So Tony and is there any data that shows the economic impact resulting from the end of reconstruction was reconstruction data of the previous years captured in this in Du Bois's presentation. Previous to reconstruction. Yeah, and the kind of capturing the years sort of reconstruction kind of where did Du Bois's data I think is what what Tony's asking about where where, where is Du Bois focusing on. I would say, I would say, post, I mean 1865 forward. I think it's pretty. I think it's pretty, there's a pretty solid line that he's not really going back beyond 1865. I'm just, I could be, I could be miss miss remembering miss remember. But I'm pretty sure that 1865 because I think that it is a testament to, despite this is so that that data prior to 1865 would probably because he does talk about that in black reconstruction, because he has to contextualize this was such a problem right and to really complicate the Civil War. So I think that it's not economic, you know, you know, what at what shifts and also understand that Du Bois is very adamant about black, sorry black reconstruction, very adamant about reconstruction. And I think that moment, right, that could have created a real American democracy, and somehow we kind of missed it after 1876 and there was a little compromise. So when I see, I don't know opponents to CRT people in elected people in government, and I see them referring to the year 1876. Like, like, that's offensive, like you don't even understand like you ended so you ended reconstruction, right, and imagine each person a vote, like it's, it's, it's, um, yeah, political again, see. I'm in the Du Bois center it happens I don't know what happens like his pictures are everywhere so it could be, he could be you know I could be channeling him right now. Now it's this legacy of history that erasure is constantly part of this project and something that I find so striking about Du Bois even in 1900 is retelling a history in his data visualizations. You know, only 30, you know, a generation removed and the myths of the last cause and everything that he is fighting in those data visualizations and narratives he's telling at 1900, you know, so it's a it's a never ending struggle. And we talk in the end or introduction about the fact that, you know, in an enslaved a formerly enslaved artisan created a frame for one of these infographics that's now since. But just I think that really captures something about Du Bois is historical sensibility, right and to think about these really one of these really modern even modernist images being framed by by something that had been created by a former slave. Yeah, I think that's right I think that's where we see Du Bois as a historian and really introducing that kind of historical sense into all of these images. Oh, we'd love to go on clubhouse. I'd love to I don't even I've never been I've never been so. I'm a little scared but yeah. So, a bunch of questions coming in. How common was data visualization among black activists around turn of the century I'm thinking of it to be wells, and the red record as well. Um, that was, yeah I to be wells. So, um, I to be wells. I mean, I don't know I feel like me telling the story of Sam Hoses lynching and it being, you know, a moment of, you know, extreme like self reflection and oh wait. I'm not, you know, my data my little letter is not going to stop anything because you know, look at the reality right in front of me, but you know the idea that I to be wells was out there talking about the, the violence and the in the inability for folks in the US to recognize and acknowledge their responsibility in the, the lynchings that were happening and her really starting this idea of anti lynching campaign. It's, it's, you know, I've heard these these things about Du Bois being disrespectful to I to be wells. The truth is is that not the truth is because I was not there. Okay, but I think that in that moment I to be wells position had been established and her work had been going on. Before a while, right before Du Bois came to this realization before he understood the implications of what lynching has on on the every day, right because understand that he was an intellectual. And unfortunately, you can be an intellectual and be in a bubble that's called your campus or your department and actually never really see what's happening in the real world, sometimes. And I think that I to be wells was definitely on the front line as an investing one of the first investigative journalists right out there bringing attention to the tragedy of lynching across the United States, especially in the south, but not only in the south. So I think that I to be wells in her own right was was kind of already established and Du Bois was newly coming on the scene. So you're talking about an imbalance that way I to be wells had been there right Du Bois is coming coming through and there's you and seeing and actually reading a letter. I to be wells invites Du Bois to give a talk at her book club about souls of black folk, and he was like no. You turned down I to be wells. I wouldn't take that as disrespect I just, you know, I don't I don't know what the personal issues were, but I think that I to be wells was was older than Du Bois and had been, you know, again, in her particular fight in doing what she was doing, I think that she needs to be highlighted and and and her story needs to be elevated in a way that I think hopefully, you know, in the decades to come we're learning about a lot of women who were, you know, in the same contemporary time period as Du Bois I here at the Du Bois center when you just had a talk about Irene digs, who you know as an anthropologist is close to my heart in terms of her looking at race in Latin America in the 1930s and 40s. As a single woman going to Cuba to do ethnography and study with Ortiz, you're talking about amazing women that were a part of this kind of research oriented space and activists oriented space that I think data and propaganda and activism was really what the definition of a public intellectual was and I think that's what I to be wells was and in speaking I swear I did not. I don't even remember the question. We're coming to about time. And I think we might have a moment for one last question as they can kind of continue to flood in. But you know maybe one might be, you know how in this is from Wendy shang similar to the earlier question was Du Bois using the exhibit to liberty to push back against other anthropological research that was and research and quotes on this one was used to oppress black people. You know, I think this might be a good way to sort of push what what some of these meta narratives as well that Du Bois and his team were responding to in the context both internationally and then maybe nationally and we might close on that last question. I think this is where we see again that that these images are both recognizing the structural conditions of anti black racism in the conditions of extreme violence the United States. And at the same time are always insisting on black vitality, joy, family, right creativity creation. And in part that is because of this discourse the sociological discourse of the moment, and you know this is a moment of that's about eugenics, and these theories about black mortality premature mortality right and so the images just do this really interesting thing where they are not presenting a rosy picture of the structural oppression of African Americans but at the same time, they are. The metrics of life and not just that. And so I think that kind of balancing act again that we see across the infographics is really powerful and is a really important intervention that they're making throughout the images. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I'm sorry. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Such a phenomenal discussion to everyone posing questions. It was so wonderful to see so many high school and college professors and teachers. Thank you for all the work you do. Britt Whitney thank you so much. Thank you so much for your kind talk such a wonderful discussion. And thank you everyone again. So enjoy the spring weather if you're in New England. Thank you, thank you person and thank you everybody for your great questions and all the enthusiasm and in the chat going on throughout the whole session. Yes, thank you all for showing up and engaging with us incredible questions and comments. Thank you.