W. E. B. Du Bois

Writer / Social Reformer

Name at birth: William Edward Burghardt DuBois

Scholar and political activist W.E.B. Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). DuBois attended Harvard University and in 1895 became the first African-American to receive a doctorate from the school. He became a university professor, a prolific writer and a pioneering social scientist on the topic of black culture. DuBois particularly disagreed with black leaders such as Booker T. Washington who urged integration into white society; Du Bois championed global African unity and (especially in later years) separatism. He distilled his views in his famous 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. In 1909 he was a founding member of the NAACP, an organization promoting progress and social equality for blacks. Du Bois continued for decades as a strong public voice on behalf of African-Americans. In the 1950s he clashed with the federal government over his support for labor, his public appreciations of the Soviet Union, and his demands that nuclear weapons be outlawed. He emigrated to Ghana in 1961 and became a citizen of that country shortly before his death in 1963. The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois was published posthumously in 1968.

Du Bois appears with baseball star Jackie Robinson in our loop on Black History.