Week 7: Reading Response: W.E.B. Du Bois - kalibirdsall/Creative-Coding-Class-Wiki GitHub Wiki

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1968) was an American civil rights activist and intellectual, as well as an historian and sociologist. He was born in Massachusetts in an integrated community. He attended Fisk University and eventually graduated from Harvard University with a PhD (the first African American to do so). He also studied in Berlin with prominent social scientists of the time like Max Weber. Du Bois was a founder of the NAACP, and used that platform to advocate for civil rights and to protest racism. Du Bois was a prominent author and cultural figure, and his work directly addressed the history and struggle of African Americans. He was one of the most important figures in the early civil rights movement in the US, and laid the foundation for the generations that followed in the fight.

Data Visualization: Du Bois' spiral graphic (plate 25, and also shown on the cover of the book) shows six curved bars which illustrate the increase in value of household furniture owned by African Americans in Georgia over a 25 year period. The curves of each successive 5 year period show a steady increase in value, and it ultimately demonstrates how African Americans were able to build wealth over the 25 year period.

I chose to write about this graphic because it was the most visually beautiful to me of all the graphics. At first I wondered why Du Bois and his collaborators chose to use the spiral shape when perhaps a straight bar graph might have been simpler to understand. However, thinking about it more, I see that at the same scale, the paper would not contain the length of the longer bars, so it's really smart to curve them around each other. The spiral also has a sense of growth and movement to it, which reflects the idea of growing value. And I like how they left an empty space in the center of the graphic, which to me implies that the data has room to grow. Above all, it's a very attractive and beautiful visualization, and to convey data to a viewer, the designer will be more successful in drawing the viewer in and engaging them with the content if it's presented in an aesthetically pleasing way. So basically, this just seems like an exceptionally smart, successful, and beautiful graphic to me.