u Bois continues to affirm these imaginative possibilities through the graphical innovation of the second series of charts, which focuses on the “condition of the descendants of former African slaves now resident in the United States of America,” as its introductory chart explains. In this series, Du Bois was also joined by his students as co-designers, as a later section of this chapter will further explore. Here, what is significant is how, in documenting the upward progress of Black Americans in a national and international context, Du Bois and his students make use of comparisons to other populations—and to other charts—in order to affirm a narrative of progress and possibility with respect to Black Americans' social, intellectual, and economic lives.
I see a parallel in the display of charts and graphs presented by DuBois in Paris, and the effects of the release of the long-awaited Epstein files. It seems that all the carefully collated and refined gathering of and release of information can have no effect on a population that seems not to care at all. I wonder if the graphs and charts were found to be moving, eliciting empathy, from the Parisian viewing public as a whole? Was it only the abolitionist-minded and the Blacks themselves who were moved by the information contained therein? James Baldwin found a willing audience for his views on the Black experience in America, except his work was several decades after DuBois' exhibit. The exhibit offers a more positive image of the living conditions of the disenfranchised masses of rural Blacks that migrated to the cities in search of a better life than they had on the plantation. The amount of succinct information that was comprised by DuBois and his team was and is astounding and hard to disregard. Prejudices are hardly based in fact and these continue into our current century. I question whether the best and most articulate argument could then or now change the mind and opinion of those long-held biases regarding the worth of an entire race of people.