The Souls of Black Folk | W. E. B. Du Bois Biography
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, into a large white community in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The racism he experienced as a child in New England formed the basis of his lifelong struggle for equal rights. Endowed with outstanding intellect, Du Bois traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk College on scholarship in 1885. His contact with the post-Civil War South in the capacity of student and teacher solidified his commitment to education and mobilization of African Americans. Following three years in the South, Du Bois completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard, focusing on history and philosophy. He completed the bulk of his doctoral work during two years in Berlin, where he came to the understanding of racism as a worldwide issue, opposed to a national issue.
Following the completion of his doctoral thesis entitled The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, Du Bois began his lifelong career as educator, researcher, and social advocate. His studies embodied the first scientific approach to examining social issues, and as a result, he is considered to be the father of social science. Du Bois worked for social reform through his study of all aspects of African-American life, in an effort to educate blacks and promote understanding between the relationship of blacks to white America. Du Bois was diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, the most popular black man in America, who espoused the idea that African Americans should accept their low social status and work for modest goals through technical training only (foregoing civil rights, higher education, and political power). In 1906, Du Bois founded the Niagra Movement, an organization of black men aimed at aggressive advocacy for civil rights. The organization was joined by a group of white liberals to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). For twenty-five years, Du Bois edited the NAACP magazine The Crisis, strongly advocating that blacks lead themselves out of oppression, with whites serving only as support.
Trips to Africa and Russia in the 1920s resulted in a revision of Du Bois' ideology; he became convinced that integration in America was unrealistic and that white capitalism was geared toward keeping minorities down. By 1933, he had left the NAACP and resumed teaching, writing, and organizing the Pan-African conference. During World War II and the beginning of the Cold War he became a peace advocate and spoke out strongly against the use of atomic weapons, resulting in his indictment as a foreign agent by the Department of Justice. Although he was acquitted, the incident served to further alienate him from the nation of his birth. In 1959, he moved to Ghana and became a Ghanaian citizen and a member of the Communist party. He died in Accra, Ghana, on August 27,1963, the day before the ‘‘March On Washington.’’
