Recreating W.E.B Du Bois’s Data Portraits

Anthony Starks

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Aug 21, 2019 · 9 min read

Background and Motivation

In May 2017, I attended a talk: “Historical development of W.E.B. Du Bois’s graphical narrative” at the Data Visualization New York meetup. As an African-American, I was intrigued by the subject matter and fascinated by the visualization choices — especially, the now-iconic spiral charts. I made a mental note to attempt to recreate these.