You might know the name of African American activist and academic W. E. B. Du Bois for his seminal text The Souls of Black Folk, as the founder of the influential National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) or even from a name-check in Beyoncé’s Homecoming Coachella film. But you probably won’t know him for his infographics.

A new exhibition, at London’s House of Illustration, co-curated by Paul Goodwin and Katie McCurrach, aims to change that. Focussing on the set of 63 infographics Du Bois presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition, it shows the pioneering graphs, charts and maps Du Bois developed with a team of African American students from his sociology laboratory at Atlanta University to radically challenge racism and the arguments behind white supremacy.

“The charts were radical in their purpose – Du Bois’ use of statistical data to refute racist claims was completely new,” says curator Katie McCurrach on Du Bois’ commission to create an exhibit for the Exposition Universelle in Paris, a huge world trade fair for the new century. “With his 63 charts, Du Bois was building up an argument against white supremacy, showing that African Americans were contributing to society – flourishing in education, purchasing land, starting businesses and publications – despite their status as people under slavery just forty years before, and despite continued discrimination and oppression.”

This, Katie explains, would have been particularly striking at the Exposition Universelle, which was essentially a celebration of French imperialism, and included displays of “living villages” where black people were shown in a derogative manner, as trophies of empire. “Du Bois’ display of scientific data was a direct challenge to this degrading presentation. He described it ‘an attempt to give, in as systematic and compact a form as possible, the history and present condition of a large group of human beings’,” says Katie. “Du Bois believed in the power of statistics to transform thinking, and these works contribute to illustration’s history as a discipline that can challenge ideas through visual communication.”