W. E. B. Du Bois | |
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Du Bois in 1907 | |
| Born | William Edward Burghardt Du Bois February 23, 1868 |
| Died | August 27, 1963 (aged 95) Accra, Ghana |
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| Children | 2, including Yolande |
| Mother | Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois |
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| Thesis | The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 (1896) |
| Doctoral advisor | Albert Bushnell Hart |
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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (/duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS;[1][2] February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Harvard University, where he was its first African American to earn a doctorate, Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists seeking equal rights. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise. 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, and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.
Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois used his position in the NAACP to respond to racist incidents. After the First World War, he attended the Pan-African Congresses, embraced socialism and became a professor at Atlanta University. Once the Second World War had ended, he engaged in peace activism and was targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
Du Bois was a prolific author. Du Bois primarily targeted racism in his polemics, which protested strongly against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for the independence of African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. 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 the use of 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 the field of American sociology. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism and was sympathetic to socialist causes.
- ^ Lewis, David Levering (1993). W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868–1919. New York City: Henry Holt and Co. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-4668-4151-2.
[Du Bois] would unfailingly insist upon the 'correct' pronunciation of his surname. 'The pronunciation of my name is Due Boyss, with the accent on the last syllable,' he would patiently explain to the uninformed.
- ^ W. E. B. Du Bois Center [@duboisumass] (November 12, 2018). "Check out this little gem of an artefact. It's a letter to W. E. B. Du Bois that he has annotated with handwritten instructions on how to pronounce his name. Thanks to our friends at the Du Bois Center in Great Barrington for showing us this! #dubois150 #dewboys #livinghistory" (Tweet). Archived from the original on July 16, 2022. Retrieved July 28, 2023 – via Twitter.