Available on Adobe Express created by Emily Corbin

When people talk about the pioneers of the data industry, there’s a gravitation to highlight modern well-known computer scientists, artificial intelligence (AI) scientists and machine learning (ML) engineers. If you want a list of data experts, simply type ‘data science experts’, ‘top data scientists’ or ‘pioneers of data science’ on the interwebs. These people publish in well-known prestigious academic venues, interviewed on leading news outlets, podcasts and other media in addition to leading the continual development of tech products we all use everyday. Their work and their words are front and center in our data news feeds, social media timelines and conversations with colleagues. It’s human nature to discuss, leverage and critique their work in real time since we’re in theory able to engage with them to better understand their perspectives and decisions.

But let’s be honest, the data industry didn’t start with any of these modern-day data (science) experts. For instance, many people attribute the term ‘data science’ to DJ Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher in 2008, William S. Cleveland in 2001 or Jeff Wu in 1997. No, the term was coined in 1974 by Peter Naur in his published work, Concise Survey of Computer Methods. He synthesized a data framework that we are essentially still following today. Peter Naur settled on the term ‘data science’ with the help of his predecessors, going back to at least 1943. Check out

’s post for a comprehensive data science timeline.

Learning more about who helped to form what we call today as ‘data science’, I’m sure you see a familiar pattern that has reverberated in nearly every industry. My interweb searches focused on finding who were the Black people in the data industry because I knew they had to exist. After many searches that routinely led me to the work of Naur, Tukey and Turning, I found the “American Negro” exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition by W.E.B. Du Bois. And then found A Red Record published by Ida B. Wells-Barnett in 1895. Before nets were neural (McCulloch & Pitt 1943), these two Black people had contextualized data points that captured and enshrined the state of the Black experience in the United States. Each of them shared their point-of-view using the tools at their disposal. W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett deserve to be placed in the data science timeline because their contributions paved the way for modern-day data visualization and storytelling techniques, respectively. They made data the vehicle to elevate decency and dignity rather than using data as a tool to manipulate and control human interactions.

W.E.B. Du Bois

You may know of W.E.B. Du Bois as the first Black man to graduate with his PhD in sociology from Harvard University in 1895, a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) or the creator of the controversial “the talented tenth” ideology. But did you know he helped to create 363 images and 67 infographics that summarized the cultural, economic and social conditions of Black people in the United States as well as challenge stereotypes of Black people’s lives in Georgia? His focus on Georgia was apropos given he taught at Atlanta University. He presented this work as an exhibit in Paris in the spring of 1900 since he had difficulty finding a venue for it in the United States. Below is a still image of a subset of the infographics.

African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition

The type of visualization method vary depending on what information is being relayed. And many are vibrant with colors to place special emphasis the the stark disparities being absorbed by the Black population. But let me draw your attention to one infographic of Georgia from 1890 that shows the distribution of the Black population by county. There were two countries with the highest Black population of 30,000 or more: the bottom half of Fulton County today and a majority of Chatham County today. Out of curiosity, I found the Black population distribution using the 2010 Census data from a Atlanta Regional Commission presentation.

Interesting how the county shapes haven’t changed much in 130 years nor the concentration of Black people in the state. We still create data visualizations like W.E.B. Du Bois, albeit not by hand, to help us convey the compelling pieces.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Viewable at the New York Public Library

While W.E.B. Du Bois was finishing his PhD dissertation studies, Ida B Wells-Barnett was a full-time journalist. She was the first co-owner and editor of a Black newspaper, called Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, in the United States by 1889. After the lynching of her friend in 1892, she started writing anti-lynching editorials. By 1894, her words had angered many in Memphis. After her publication house was burned down, she and her family moved to Chicago. It was there that she published “A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States”, where she documented 728 lynching cases that had occurred between 1884 and 1892 using research by the Chicago Tribune. Frederick Douglass’ Preface spoke to the immeasurable contribution she made by doing this work:

“Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.

Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.

But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven — yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance.”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s work is a masterclass in designing and executing any data project. She cataloged names (if available), age, location, date, suspected offenses (if provided) and events leading up to lynching (if available). She gathered the facts and narrated the story, brilliantly.

And Ida B. Wells-Barnett ended her publication with a call-to-action that’s timeless in its simplicity and its effectiveness. It reads in part:

“The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures by interested friends is “What can I do to help the cause?” The answer always is: “Tell the world the facts.” When the Christian world knows the alarming growth and extent of outlawry in our land, some means will be found to stop it.

The object of this publication is to tell the facts, and friends of the cause can lend a helping hand by aiding in the distribution of these books. When I present our cause to a minister, editor, lecturer, or representative of any moral agency, the first demand is for facts and figures. Plainly, I can not then hand out a book with a twenty-five-cent tariff on the information contained. This would be only a new method in the book agents’ art. In all such cases it is a pleasure to submit this book for investigation, with the certain assurance of gaining a friend to the cause.

There are many agencies which may be enlisted in our cause by the general circulation of the facts herein contained. The preachers, teachers, editors and humanitarians of the white race, at home and abroad, must have facts laid before them, and it is our duty to supply these facts.”

As our digital society has rightfully become overwhelmed by algorithmic-based harms, we need to seek out more hidden pioneers from all minoritized backgrounds. W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett can’t be the only hidden pioneers in the data industry. But they help us turn on the light of truth.