W.E.B Du Bois
A pioneering social scientist, writer, activist and organizer, William Edward Burghardt DuBois a.k.a W.E.B Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he was raised by a single mother and attended the local Congregational Church. He did not experience the harsh conditions of slavery or of southern prejudice. His family was one of the few Black families living in the predominantly White town in the western part of the state. Though his childhood was basically happy, he learned early that Blacks were not fully accepted as equal, even in New England. Great Barrington had a majority European American community, who generally treated Du Bois well. He attended the local integrated public school and played with White schoolmates.
Determined to be a leader of his people, Du Bois studied hard and dreamed of getting a degree from Harvard College. Books and writing interested young Du Bois more than athletics, although he did enjoy games and socializing with his friends. In high school, Du Bois was already focusing on racial inequality. At age 15, he became the local correspondent for The New York Globe and gave lectures and wrote editorials, spreading his ideas that Black people needed to politicize themselves. In 1884 he graduated as valedictorian from Great Barrington High. His commencement speech focused on the abolitionist, Wendell Phillips. It was his desire to enroll at Harvard College after high school, but his family did not have the funds to pay for his tuition.
Upon his graduation from high school, where he was the only Black person in his class of twelve. Members of the clergy and others in the community awarded Du Bois with a scholarship to attend Fisk University in Nashville, TN, in the fall of 1885. Fisk was established in 1866 as a school for Blacks, with its mission to become one of the best educational institutions in the south. Because of his superior academic background, he was admitted at the sophomore level. Fisk was a radically different world from that of Great Barrington, and, significantly, it provided him with the long-sought opportunity to relate to Blacks his own age. While in Nashville he was exposed to massive racial discrimination for the first time and he grew in his knowledge of the race issues that prevented African-Americans from becoming full citizens of the United States. Du Bois not only performed well academically at Fisk, but socially. A popular student by his own account, he edited the school newspaper, the Fisk Herald, and devoted himself to public speaking, becoming in his own words “an impassioned orator.”
Du Bois also learned more about the deep-rooted racial discrimination of the South after Reconstruction. As a result, he decided to dedicate his life to ending racism and uplifting Black Americans. Du Bois taught school in the country during his summers where he witness the terrible conditions in which people were forced to live. In June 1888, he graduated from Fisk, with a Bachelor in Arts and gave the Commencement address. Du Bois was still very determined to go to Harvard with financial aid he matriculated that fall at the junior level. Harvard did not recognize his degree from Fisk, ruling that its academic program did not measure up to Harvard’s standard. In 1890, Harvard awarded Du Bois his second bachelor's degree, cum laude, and the next year a master’s degree. From 1892 to 1894, he interrupted his Harvard doctoral program to take advantage of a fellowship to study at the University of Berlin.
He returned to Harvard in 1894 and completed his dissertation, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States” (1896). That it was accepted for publication by Harvard proved to be the beginning of a career in writing and scholarship. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, making him the first Black American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. Du Bois accepted a teaching job at Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1894. While at Wilberforce, Du Bois married Nina Gomer, one of his students, on May 12, 1896. In 1896 he left Ohio to study the slums of Philadelphia on a special fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania. His primary responsibility was to undertake a study of Black society in the city’s Seventh Ward slums. His apartment in the slum area brought him close to the worst effects of poverty, and he felt slighted by the university leadership. This led a study on the pioneering sociological study of an urban community, which formed the foundation for his landmark study, "The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study", the first scholarly race study of an urban place in what became a growing trend of Progressive-era social surveys, published in 1899. It was a landmark in the annals of sociological study and social advocacy.
Du Bois next taught at Atlanta University, where he remained for 13 years. While there, he studied and wrote about morality, urbanization, business and education, the church, and crime as it affected Black society. Du Bois's output at Atlanta University was prodigious, despite a limited budget. He produced numerous social science papers and annually hosted the Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems. He also received grants from the U.S. government to prepare reports about the Black workforce and culture. His students considered him to be a brilliant teacher, but aloof and strict. Du Bois attended the First Pan-African Conference, held in London on July 23–25, 1900. The Pan-African Congress attempted to secure a place for peoples of African descent within the new world order. Du Bois closed the conference by delivering a speech entitled "To the Nations of the World", in which he asked European leaders to ensure equal opportunity for all races, allow their colonies the right to self-government, and to recognize the political and human rights of African Americans.
The two great leaders of the Black community in the late 19th and 20th century were Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Washington was the director of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It was during this time that DuBois and Washington had their personal battles on how to best move the Black population forward in American society. Washington was the architect of the Atlanta Compromise, an unwritten deal that he had struck in 1895 with Southern White leaders who dominated state governments after Reconstruction. Essentially the agreement provided that Southern Blacks, who overwhelmingly lived in rural communities, would submit to the current discrimination, segregation, disenfranchisement, and non-unionized employment. It also provided that Southern Whites would permit Blacks to receive a basic education, some economic opportunities, and justice within the legal system. That Northern Whites would invest in Southern enterprises and fund Black educational charities. Washington urged Blacks to acquire industrial education, property, and good personal habits rather than push immediately for political rights or social equality. Despite his opposition, Du Bois sent congratulations to Washington for his Atlanta Exposition Speech.
The Washingtonian approach was an accommodationist point of view, while Du Bois’s strategy emphasized immediate acquisition of rights such as voting, education, and access to public facilities. Du Bois's experience in the South caused him to reject the accommodationist methods of Booker T. Washington, and to press for public protest against racial violence and discrimination. Du Bois was acclaimed a great American essayist after he authored "The Souls of Black Folk" in 1903. It became a classic of the times and was widely quoted. In it he said, "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," and dismissed the accommodation to discrimination advocated by Booker T. Washington". In these writings, Du Bois argued that White Americans needed to take responsibility for their contributions to the problem of racial inequality. He delineated the flaws he saw in Washington’s argument, but he also agreed that Black Americans must take better advantage of educational opportunities to uplift their race as they simultaneously fought racism directly.
Through his membership in the American Negro Academy, Du Bois coined the expression "talented tenth" in a 1903 essay called "The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative Negroes of Today". DuBois wrote, "The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth. It is the problem of developing the best of this race that they may guide the mass away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their own and other races." Du Bois believed that this "talented tenth" of the African American population should be educated as professionals, academics, teachers, ministers, and spokesmen, who would then be able to lead the Black population and lift them up to their true position in society. Many scholars have concluded that it was an elitist theory that privileged the Black elite at the expense of all others.
Two years later, in 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the Niagara Movement, which was dedicated chiefly to attacking the platform of Booker T. Washington. The small organization, which included Fredrick McGhee, Max Barber and William Monroe Trotter – met in Canada, near Niagara Falls annually until 1909. Trotter, however, insisted that no White people be included in the organization, while Du Bois maintained that an interracial alliance was imperative. When the organization first formed, they did not allow women to become members, (Trotter was vocal about this), but that would change in the next year, when women were allowed to join. Du Bois and Trotter wrote a declaration of principles opposing the Atlanta Compromise, and which were incorporated as the Niagara Movement in 1906. The new movement would fight inequality, not accept it. Their tactic would not be accommodation but confrontation.
The movement wanted to publicize their ideals to other Blacks, but most Black periodicals were owned by publishers sympathetic to Washington. The Niagara Movement was seriously weakened by internal squabbles between Du Bois and Trotter and Washington’s opposition. Du Bois complaint against Trotter was that it is impossible for him to work with other people without dictating their course absolutely according to his own narrow program. The conflict between Du Bois and Trotter turned on vital principles. Du Bois stated that "The Niagara Movement can no longer afford to carry Mr. Trotter and be responsible for his opinions and deeds." Just 3 years after Du Bois and Trotter co-wrote the Declaration of Principles, William Monroe Trotter withdrew from the movement.
During the same year Du Bois worked with Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, Charles Edward Russell, William English Walling, and other interested Whites in formally establishing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It grew out of an interracial meeting triggered by the violent racial disturbances in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908. At Du Bois's suggestion, the word "colored", rather than "black", was used to include "dark skinned people everywhere". Du Bois was the sole African American founder of the NAACP. In 1910, he left Atlanta University to work full time as the publications director at the NAACP, where he served as the editor of the organization's magazine "The Crisis" from 1910 to 1934. Using the Crisis, Du Bois directed a continuous barrage of bitter and sarcastic agitation at White America while serving as a source of information and pride to the Black community.
Du Bois’s career after 1910 went through many changes that reflected the varying conditions of race relations in the United States. After the East St. Louis riots occurred in the summer of 1917, Du Bois traveled to St. Louis to report on the riots. Between 40 and 250 African Americans were massacred by Whites, primarily due to resentment caused by St. Louis industry hiring Blacks to replace striking White workers. After World War I, Du Bois traveled to Paris in 1919 to attend the second Pan-African Congress. He believed for American Blacks to be free Blacks everywhere would have to be free. He was assisted by his friend, Ida Gibbs-Hunt who was the assistant secretary for the Second Pan-African Congress. Their goal was to unite Africans across the diaspora around a common purpose.
Du Bois returned from Europe more determined than ever to gain equal rights for African Americans. He decided to try to have another Pan-African Congress again in 1921 but ran headlong into Marcus Garvey who had established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to unite Africa and its descendants. Personal and political antagonism between Du Bois and Marcus Garvey was formidable and long-standing. At first, W.E.B. Du Bois gave tepid support to Garvey's ideas for Black independence and to the idea of Garvey's Black Star Line. But by 1920 Du Bois had become deeply suspicious of Garvey's methods, ideas, and motives, and published his own damning expose of Black Star Line finances in "The Crisis". The animosity between the two men became personal and venomous. Du Bois called Garvey the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race -- either "a lunatic or a traitor."
Racial protest during the decade following World War I focused on securing anti-lynching legislation. During this period the NAACP was the leading protest organization and Du Bois was its leading spokesperson. Du Bois was a prolific author. He primarily targeted racism with his writing, which protested strongly against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and racial discrimination in important social institutions. During the Red Summer, where a series of race riots occurred across America in 1919, in which more than 300 African Americans were killed in more than 30 cities, Du Bois documented the atrocities in the pages of The Crisis. In 1920, Du Bois published "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil", the first of his three autobiographies. The book contained Du Bois's feminist essay, "The Damnation of Women", which was a tribute to the dignity and worth of women, particularly African American women.
Du Bois and Alain Locke both challenge Blacks to see their worth with "Negro art" and "Negro literature", during this period known as the Harlem Renaissance. The 'New Negro', a term popularized by Locke symbolized the emerging Black identity. As the editor of the NAACP's publication, "The Crisis", for some twenty-four years, Du Bois published the work of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and other writers as well as his own increasingly radical opinions. During its heyday in the mid-1920s, his article "A Negro Art Renaissance" celebrated the end of the long hiatus of Blacks from creative endeavors. Du Bois frequently promoted Black artistic creativity in his writings. During this period of Black literary, visual, and musical art, Du Bois argued that racial equality could be gained through the arts. Using his influence during his time as editor of The Crisis, Du Bois promoted the work of many African American visual artists and writers. Du Bois has been sculpted and painted by many of the prominent luminaries of the art world and was a key figure during the Harlem Renaissance.
Throughout the 1920s, Du Bois and the NAACP shifted support back and forth between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, induced by promises from the candidates to fight lynchings, improve working conditions, or support voting rights in the South; invariably, the candidates failed to deliver on their promises. A rivalry emerged in 1931 between the NAACP and the Communist Party, when the communists responded quickly and effectively to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-American youths arrested in 1931 in Alabama for rape. Du Bois and the NAACP felt that the case would not be beneficial to their cause, so they chose to let the Communist Party organize the defense efforts, besides the parents of the boys wanted the Communist Party and not the NAACP.
In 1934, Du Bois left the NAACP. Du Bois found himself increasingly at odds with Walter White, the head of the NAACP. Du Bois encouraged voluntary segregation because he thought Black children would get a better education from Black teachers. He also was in opposition to the NAACP's largely legalistic and propagandistic approach to fighting racism. That year that Du Bois reversed his stance on segregation, stating that "separate but equal" was an acceptable goal for African Americans. The NAACP leadership was stunned, and asked Du Bois to retract his statement, but he refused. The NAACP could not allow its flagship publication to promote views it officially rejected. Facing institutional constraints he found unacceptable, he submitted his resignation. In 1943, at the age of 75, Du Bois was abruptly fired from his position at Atlanta University by college president Rufus Early Clement. After a ten-year hiatus, Du Bois came back to NAACP as Director of Special Research, a position created largely out of respect for his stature, from 1944 to 1948.
After World War II, Du Bois continued to change as the history of Blacks in the United States and the world evolved. The persistence of colonial rule after the war disturbed him, and he frankly criticized the great powers for not totally freeing their dependencies. While he continued to see the Soviet Union as a model in some respects, he did not refrain from criticizing that country’s domination of Eastern Europe and other areas. During this period he was active in placing the grievances of Blacks before the United Nations. On October 23, 1947, the NAACP sent to the U.N. a document titled “An Appeal to the World,” in which the NAACP asked the U.N. to redress human rights violations the United States committed against its African-American citizens. Du Bois, who drafted the NAACP petition with other leading lawyers and scholars, intended to focus attention on the U.S.’s systematic denial of human rights to its African American citizens.
In 1948, W.E.B. Du Bois revised and repudiated his "Talented Tenth" thesis into the another essay called "The Guiding Hundredth". When the Cold War commenced in the mid-1940s, the NAACP distanced itself from communists, lest its funding or reputation suffer. DuBois became an open supporter of progressive and left-wing groups, which created problems with NAACP leadership. Ignoring the NAACP's desires, Du Bois continued to fraternize with communist sympathizers such as Paul Robeson, Howard Fast and Shirley Graham (his future second wife). Du Bois's association with prominent communists made him a liability for the NAACP, especially since the Federal Bureau of Investigation was starting to aggressively investigate communist sympathizers. The NAACP leadership ended his employment, pushing him out by refusing to renew his appointment after political and ideological conflicts.
In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 4% of the statewide total. By the early 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, DuBois devoted much of his energy to promoting peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. He embraced this controversial position at great personal and professional peril. Later in life, Du Bois turned to communism as the means to achieve equality. This eventually brought him into conflict with the United States Justice Department, who were caught up in the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s. His displeasure with American foreign policy further alienated him from his own country, and in 1951 he was charged with failing to register as an agent for a foreign power because of his pivotal position in the Peace Information Center. Although he put on trial, he was acquitted, he never felt at home in the United States after that.
In 1961 DuBois gave up his citizenship and chose to leave the U.S behind him. He emigrated to Ghana, at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah, where he spent the rest of his life. Du Bois’ health had declined in 1962, and on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of 95, one day before the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom", as more than 200,000 people were assembling on Washington. They paused to honor Du Bois, and on the next day NAACP head Roy Wilkins paid tribute to him at the Lincoln Memorial. Du Bois was given a state funeral on August 29–30, 1963, at Nkrumah's request, As poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, sociologist, historian, and journalist, he wrote 21 books, edited 15 more, and published over 100 essays and articles. W.E.B. Du Bois’s life encapsulates the post–Civil War era of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the modern era civil rights movement in the 1960s.