Visualizing the Vital History and Future of HBCUs in America

Scholar, educator, strategist and fundraiser John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. recruited Graphicacy to create compelling visuals for his new book and Keynote presentation on the promise of HBCUs for America.

For over 25 years, John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. has worked to advance socially conscious and purposeful education, particularly for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). His distinguished career includes tenures as Morehouse College president and executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs in the Obama Administration.

In 2023, John published his first book: Hope and Healing: Black Colleges and the Future of American Democracy. In it, he posits a realistic vision for a stronger America that includes elevating the nation’s HBCUs.

A preacher’s son, John understands the power of good storytelling and what it takes to catalyze change. To this end, he needed impactful graphics to help reinforce his main ideas — including the potential for HBCUs to heal American democracy and the global climate crisis. John worked closely with a Graphicacy founding team member, Joshua Korenblat, to develop the book’s chart elements, which the Graphicacy team later used as a starting point for an expanded multimedia presentation.

“I wanted the visuals to be crisp, clear and compelling,” John said. “I wanted a partner who understood that a picture can be worth far more than a million words, and I found that with Graphicacy.”

A Story Yet Untold

John set out to write a book on HBCUs like no other. “So many books about HBCUs follow what I call violin narratives,” he said. “You can almost hear a violin playing in the background of a sad story about overcoming the odds. I wanted to write a trumpet narrative, a book that serves as a clarion call for our collective future.”

Joshua worked with John to develop a series of charts and graphs that quickly drove home the points for John’s three primary audiences: major philanthropists capable of boosting HBCU endowments, HBCU leaders, and the higher education community as a whole.

“To support but not distract from John’s data-supported narrative, the book required just the right amount and style of clean grayscale charts and graphs,” said Jeffrey Osborn, Graphicacy’s Creative Director for Visual Storytelling.

Many visual elements depict the funding history of HBCUs. In one section of the book, tables highlight the reversal of fortunes for Tuskegee University, whose endowment once exceeded but now lags far behind those of preeminent Ivy League and private liberal arts schools.

“The craftwork here is in the chart choices and the simplicity of execution,” said Jeffrey. “We deliberated carefully about what to keep and what to leave out to avoid confusing or overwhelming readers.”

From Page to Stage

John planned to go on the road to promote his book and its core ideas. He asked Graphicacy to produce an accompanying presentation that would show his audiences the difficult birth and development of HBCUs and their unfinished business in shaping the future of American democracy. He needed accessible and compelling data visualizations along with evocative conceptual images to capture both the “head and heart” elements of his story.

Graphicacy worked with John to build a visually rich multimedia presentation using Apple’s Keynote tool. To begin, John worked with Rizqi Rachmat, Graphicacy’s Head of Data Visualization Strategy & Accounts, to structure his story points and data into a framework that would help the design team create an effective visual narrative.

Graphicacy’s project design team — Jeffrey Osborn, Rebecca Lamm (Data Visualization & UI Designer) and Jeejung Kim (Motion Graphics Designer, Animator & Illustrator) — then combined video clips, photographs, charts and graphs with animated transitions and powerful conceptual illustrations to drive home John’s urgent messages.

“Graphicacy conceptualized the perfect visuals to help me depict what I call higher education’s holy grail — the need for institutions to optimize both capital and character,” he said. “Many have done one or the other, but none has fully optimized both on the same campus at the same time. That’s what I’d like to see change.”

Other notable images include a grid of tiles with HBCU institutions flipping to reveal prominent graduates as well as slides comparing the struggle of HBCUs to those institutions aided by wealth, infrastructure and other favorable conditions.

For maximum versatility, Graphicacy designed an assortment of slides for John to easily add or subtract as needed. “Depending on who I’m talking to and where I am, I can modify my presentation to last 10 minutes or I can do up to an hour,” John said.

Close Collaboration Pays Off

Over the course of a year, John and the Graphicacy team worked together closely to develop every stage of the book and presentation. “I was impressed by their ability to hear what I was saying and translate that accordingly into a visual story,” John said.

“The beauty of working with Graphicacy is that they got me,” he continued. “They understood what was important to me and they rooted their creativity in that. Each time I got off of a call with them, I looked forward to seeing how they’d translate what I said into images. I was never disappointed and I almost didn’t want it to end.”

As for the reception John’s received so far: “I’ve been presenting on lots of campuses and at conferences, and I’m getting standing ovations,” he said. “It’s lots of fun, and I have Graphicacy to thank.”

Graphicacy helps organizations like yours tell informative, provocative, inspiring stories using facts, figures, and trends to show audiences why your mission matters — and what their role is in the fight.

That’s the power of visual storytelling. It draws people in and connects them to the issue and your work on an emotional level. It creates an experience they can’t look away from. And it invites them to do something about it.

Graphicacy has created data visualizations and infographics for top-tier organizations and companies, domestically and internationally, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Resources Institute and the Bezos Earth Fund, the World Bank, The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Everytown for Gun Safety and many others.