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W. E. B. Du Bois Birthday and Biography

 

Born:  February 23, 1868

Birthplace:  Great Barrington, MA

Died:   August 27, 1963

Zodiac Sign:  Pisces

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer, and editor.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community.

After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a history, sociology, and economics professor at Atlanta University.

Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Earlier, Du Bois had risen to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African American activists who wanted equal rights for Black people. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington that provided that Southern Black people would work and submit to white political rule while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive essential educational and economic opportunities.

Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African American intellectual elite.

He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift.

He believed that African Americans needed the chance for advanced education to develop their leadership.

Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, is a seminal work in African American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America, challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era.

Borrowing a phrase from Frederick Douglass, he popularized using the term color line to represent the injustice of the separate but equal doctrine prevalent in American social and political life.

His 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn is regarded in part as one of the first scientific treatises in American sociology. He published two other life stories with essays on sociology, politics, and history.

As editor of the NAACP's journal, The Crisis, he published influential pieces.

Du Bois believed capitalism was a primary cause of racism and was sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life.

He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament.

The United States Civil Rights Act, embodying reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.


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