Towards a Long History of Black Data Activism

The History Department welcomes Dr. Meagan Wierda!

Abstract: When scholars think about African Americans as wielders of numerical data, they are far more likely to direct their attention to turn-of-the-century data activists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and W.E.B. Du Bois than to antebellum abolitionists. Yet the latter, not unlike the former, used data as a way of gauging the state of Black life following manumissions, self-emancipations, and gradual abolition acts. Whereas Wells-Barnett and Du Bois were interested in assessing how African Americans fared following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, their antebellum counterparts were just as curious about the status of women and men during the age of gradual emancipation. With these connections in mind, this paper invites us to think about the long history of African American data activism. It considers how Black accountings of Black lives brought communities into being and equipped African American activists throughout the nineteenth century and beyond with the means to demand and work towards greater justice.