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.