W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (International Phonetic Alphabet|pronounced [du'bojz]) (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was a civil rights activist, a sociologist, and an educator, who is widely recognized as the foremost black intellectual and the principal black protest spokesperson during the first half of the 20th century. His achievements as a scholar, prolific writer, editor, poet, and historian earned him the honor, in 1943, of being the first black admitted to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1963, at the age of 95, he became a naturalized citizen of Ghana, renouncing his American citizenship, and choosing to live his final days as a self-exiled Communist.

Intellectually gifted and scholastically oriented, Du Bois, in 1883, graduated early—at age fifteen—from Great Barrington High School. He was the only black student in his graduating class. As a rigorous academician, he excelled in college; enjoyed tenure at numerous teaching posts; produced more than 4,000 published works over the course of his life; and became an heroic exemplar to those who would eventually congeal as the American black intelligentsia. In his role as a scholar activist, he went beyond the confines of the classroom and the halls of academia, in his quest to solve what he called "The problem of the twentieth century—the problem of the color line." Du Bois is, today, viewed by many as the father of modern black scholarship, of modern black militancy and self-consciousness, and of modern black cultural development.

The post-Reconstruction-Era U.S.A. was rife with such ills as Jim Crow segregation laws, lynchings, peonage, race riots, and disfranchisement, all of which evinced a context of intensely noxious racism. Prior to his graduation from Fisk University, one of the premiere black institutions of higher learning, the young Du Bois had already resolved to take up the mission of liberating black America from oppression. He envisioned himself as a destined race leader. And since his background was quite different from that of Booker T. Washington, Du Bois ultimately developed a very different perspective regarding what had to be done to bring about racial reconciliation and harmony.

Biography

Born at Church Street, on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in the United States, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the son of Alfred Du Bois and Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois. The couple's February 5, 1867 wedding had been announced in the Berkshire Courier. Alfred Du Bois was born in San Domingo, now known as Haiti [David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919]. His son was born one year after the ratification and addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution [1]. Alfred Du Bois, himself, was descended from free people of color, and he could trace his lineage back to one Dr. James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York. This physician, while in the Bahamas, had sired, by his slave mistress, three sons—including Alfred—and a daughter.

In 1890, two years after receiving his Bachelor's degree from Fisk University, Du Bois graduated cum laude, with a Master's degree from Harvard University. He then went abroad, to study at the University of Berlin. In 1894, at the age of twenty-six, he returned to America and taught at Wilberforce University. The next year, Du Bois became the first black person to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. This advanced degree was in history, despite the fact that Du Bois' primary training was in the social sciences. His doctoral dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (1896), was a foretaste of the type of observational investigations and case studies he would produce in the years to come. Following his professorship at Wilberforce, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where he published the trailblazing sociological study, The Philadelphia Negro (1899). He then went on to Atlanta University (present-day Clark Atlanta University), where he established one of the first departments of sociology in the United States, and where he systematized a sequence of studies exploring the life and history of American blacks. [2]

Steeped in academia, research, and publication, Du Bois was intially passionate in his conviction that, through social science, the knowledge to resolve the race problem would be found. In addition, he firmly believed that a college degree was essential, since it furnished young blacks with the insight and intellectual competency required to be of service to the race. Ultimately, however, the steadily worsening racial climate of his day drove him gradually to the conclusion that only through agitation and protest could genuine social transformation be wrought.

A diligent seeker of truth, Du Bois spent the period from 1910-1934 on leave from his Atlanta University teaching post, as he explored one potential method after another for solving the intractable race crisis. He was quite exasperated over the fact that his several sociological publications had been given virtually no notice by influential opinion molders. And he seethed over the idea that, in his view, the leadership of Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Machine enabled the hated caste system to remain in place, and kept black America beneath the heel of accommodation to white supremacy.

After Washington's death in 1915, Du Bois was heartened by the prospect that he would no longer be hindered by a leadership struggle with the Tuskegeean. By the following year, Du Bois had replaced Washington as America's most prominent black leader. From 1916-1930, increasing numbers of blacks were embracing the Atlantan professor's doctrine of advancement through protest and agitation. Yet, as he and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shifted from black America's "radical" fringe to the centrist position, Du Bois often found himself necessarily encouraging the same tactics for which he had opposed Washington. And, in response, ironically, heaped upon Du Bois were the same criticisms he had wreaked upon his old rival. His most satisfying experience of this period, however, was his reign as editor of the Crisis magazine, which he employed as a forum to promote philosophical debate, race-issue-related commentary, cultural nationalism, and a host of other concerns that he deemed significant.

The Atlantan professor's attraction to Socialism and Marxism increased throughout the 1920s. He had only briefly joined the Socialist Party in 1912, but for the rest of his life, he remained sympathetic to Marxist approaches. During a 1926 visit to the Soviet Union, he stated, "If what I've seen with my eyes and heard with my ears in Russia is Bolshevism, then I am a Bolshevik." This statement was evidence of a profound change of heart and direction. That shift had come about as a result of Du Bois's connections to early Socialists like Charles E. Russell, Mary White Ovington, William E. Walling, and Joel E. Spingarn, who were the ground-floor architects of the NAACP. By 1934, Du Bois had resigned as editor of the Crisis, and had resumed his professorship at Atlanta University. His years of having conflicted with NAACP Executive Secretary, Walter White, had left Du Bois frustrated. In addition, he was greatly disillusioned over the fact that his idea of a nationalist Pan-African Movement had fallen on deaf ears. Too, his theory of The Talented Tenth, as black America's most exemplary elite, who would embody the intelligence and the competency needed to pull the entire race up to full citizenship, had found few takers.

By the mid-1930s, Du Bois's ties with the ideological Left had brought him some serious problems. His crusades for "voluntary segregation" and "economic separatism" triggered aspersions from other intellectuals. As he increasingly identified himself with pro-Marxist causes, he attracted the watchful eye of the federal government. Indicted and acquitted in 1951 of charges that he was a subversive agent of a foreign government, he became totally disillusioned with America. In a 1961 letter to Gus Hall, Du Bois wrote, "Today I have reached a firm conclusion that Capitalism cannot reform itself. It is doomed to self destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism...is the only way of human life." Two years later, in Ghana, as an official Communist Party member, Du Bois died.

Marriage and Family Life

W.E.B. Du Bois married Ms. Nina Gomer in 1896. From this union were born two children: a son (Burghardt), who died a toddler, and a daughter (Yolande). A year after Nina's death in 1950, he wedded his second wife, Shirley Graham, who survived him.

Joined Communist Party At Age 93

Du Bois was investigated by the FBI, who claimed, in May of 1942, that "[h]is writing indicates him to be a socialist," and that he "has been called a Communist and at the same time criticized by the Communist Party."

Du Bois visited Communist China during the Great Leap Forward. Also, in the March 16, 1953 issue of The National Guardian, Du Bois wrote "Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20^th century approach his stature."

Du Bois was chairman of the Peace Information Center at the start of the Korean War. He was among the signers of the Stockholm Peace Pledge, which opposed the use of nuclear weapons. He was indicted in the United States under the Foreign Agents Registration Act and was acquitted for lack of evidence. W.E.B. Du Bois became disillusioned with both black capitalism and racism in the United States. In 1959, Du Bois received the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1961, at the age of 93, he joined the Communist Party, USA and announced his membership in The New York Times.

Became A Self-Exiled Citizen Of Ghana

Du Bois was invited to Ghana in 1961, by President Kwame Nkrumah, to direct the Encyclopedia Africana, a government production, and a long-held, Du Bois dream. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, renounced their American citizenship, and became citizens of Ghana. Du Bois's health had declined in 1962, and on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of 95, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Career

Academia and Race-Centered Scholarship

Among his works that contribute to the fields of education and sociology, highly ranked is his Ph.D. dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, which was extolled as the "first scientific historical work" authored by a black person. It was published as the initial volume of the then new series of Harvard Historical Studies (1896). In addition, Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899—University of Pennsylvania) is a trailblazing effort with regard to the sociological analysis of the black American. Also, his The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is a book of essays that, many agree, concretized the opposition to Booker T. Washington's program of developing and using economic clout to combat racism. Regarding the sociology of intergroup relations, Du Bois offered the concept of "racialism," which, he contended, is distinguished from "racism." The Atlantan professor suggested that racialism connotes the idea that human racial differences exist, whether they be biological, psychological, or transcendental. He subsequently argued that racism is the use of this idea to advance the notion that one's own particular people-group is inherently superior to all others.

Civil Rights Activism and the Impact of the NAACP

In 1895, from his teaching post at Wilberforce University, the young Du Bois joined the throng of Americans around the country who congratulated Booker T. Washington on his landmark Atlanta Exposition Address. At that point, Du Bois was in agreement with Washington that fervent faith in God, strong families, and economic stability were indispensable for black uplift. Eight years later, however, Du Bois openly attacked Washington, denouncing him and his program as hindrances to authentic black advancement, and insisting that the Washingtonian approach would not serve the long-term interests of blacks as a whole: "The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. ...so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them..." Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others (1903).

Three years prior to this division, in 1900, Washington had founded the National Negro Business League (NNBL), as solid practice of his preachment that financial stability had to precede the attainment of full legal rights. Interestingly enough, in 1898, W.E.B. Du Bois had published his seminal work entitled, The Negro In Business. But with the 1903 declaration of his goal to diminish Washington's influence, Du Bois instigated a leadership struggle that split black America into two camps.

Du Bois's civil-rights vision was braced atop three pillars: (1) setting blacks free by the dispassionate presentation of philosophical and sociological Truth (his capitalization); (2) racial advancement via manly agitation and clamorous protest against oppression; and (3) uplifting the race via the training and leadership of The Talented Tenth. These ideas did not gain serious traction in black America until some ten years before Du Bois's death.

As the zealous, idealistic members of a black intelligentsia began to organize themselves around Du Bois, their goal was clear—the immediate attainment of full civil rights for blacks, and the immediate elimination of white racism in the USA. In 1905, this group founded the Niagara Movement, centered upon Du Bois and another Harvard-educated, Northeastern black, named William Monroe Trotter. But Trotter insisted that no white people be included in the organization, while Du Bois maintained that an interracial alliance was imperative. Following the split between these two leaders, Du Bois, in 1909, became the chief black founder of the interracial National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1910, he left his teaching post at Atlanta University to work full-time as the organization's publications director.

He wrote weekly columns in many newspapers, including the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle, and three black-owned publications—the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the New York Amsterdam News. Likewise, from 1910-1934, Du Bois was Founding Editor-in-Chief of the group's mouthpiece, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races. Using strategic editorialism, he so persuasively impacted his readership, that the magazine's circulation soared from 1,000 in 1910 to more than 100,000 by 1920. [The Baltimore Sun, June 8, 1997, "A New and Changed NAACP Magazine"]

By regularly publishing such Harlem Renaissance writers as Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer, and by incessantly hammering away at Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee leadership, Du Bois held black America's attention. He later added to his list of targets, Marcus Garvey and his nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Thus, the Crisis came to be viewed as a repository of authentic American black social and political thought.

The growing estrangement between Du Bois and NAACP Executive Secretary, Walter Francis White, was yet another case of the former's constant clashes with others inside the pantheon of leadership. Waxing more and more radically Leftist, Du Bois found himself increasingly at odds with leaders such as White and Roy Wilkins. Finally, in 1934, after penning in the Crisis two essays suggesting that black separatism could be a useful economic strategy, Du Bois quit the magazine and returned to his Atlanta University professorship. Nevertheless, historians almost unanimously agree that it was because of Du Bois's twenty-five years of effort and impact that the NAACP eventually became, and still remains, America's premiere and most influential civil rights organization.

In 1899, the American Historical Association (AHA) convened in Boston and Cambridge. According to Du Bois biographer, David Levering Lewis: "The Association then numbered fifteen hundred members and was presided over by James Ford Rhodes, successful Ohio businessman and even more successful author of the arbitral, multi-volume History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. At this 1899 meeting, there were no Jews, no Negroes, no women to speak of, and all the gays were in the closet."

In 1909, W.E.B. Du Bois addressed the AHA. "His would be the first and last appearance of an African-American on the program until 1940."[3]

In a review [November 5, 2000, Washington Post] of Part II of Lewis's biography of Du Bois, Michael R. Winston observed that one historical question, not often addressed, is still fundamental to an understanding of American history. That question is, "How black Americans developed the psychological stamina and collective social capacity to cope with the sophisticated system of racial domination that white Americans had anchored deeply in law and custom."

Winston continued, "Although any reasonable answer is extraordinarily complex, no adequate one can ignore the man (Du Bois) whose genius was for 70 years at the intellectual epicenter of the struggle to destroy white supremacy as public policy and social fact in the United States."

In the aftermath of the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Du Bois became impressed by the growing strength of Imperial Japan. The Atlantan professor interpreted the victory of Japan over Tsarist Russia as an example of "colored pride". According to historian David Levering Lewis, Du Bois became a willing part of Japan's "Negro Propaganda Operations," run by Japanese Academic and Imperial Agent, Hikida Yasuichi.

After traveling to the United States to speak with University students at Howard University, Scripps College, and Tuskegee University, Yasuichi became closely involved in shaping Du Bois's opinions of Imperial Japan. In 1936, Yasuichi and the Japanese Ambassador arranged a junket for Du Bois and a small group of his fellow academics. The trip included stops in Japan, China, and the Soviet Union, although the Soviet leg was canceled because Du Bois's diplomatic contact, Karl Radek, had been swept up in Stalin's purges. While on the Chinese leg of the trip, Du Bois commented that the source of Chinese-Japanese enmity was China's "submission to white aggression and Japan's resistance," and he asked the Chinese people to welcome the Japanese as liberators. The effectiveness of the Japanese propaganda campaign was also seen when Du Bois joined a large group of African-American academics who cited the Mukden Incident to justify occupation and annexation of southern Manchuria.

Legacy

Du Bois's acclaimed biographer, David Levering Lewis, wrote: "In the course of his long, distinguished career, W.E.B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution for the problem of 20th-century racism—scholarship, propaganda, integration, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, and third-world solidarity." (W.E.B. Du Bois—The Fight For Equality And The American Century: 1919-1963)

In 1992, the United States honored Du Bois with a postage stamp bearing his likeness. On October 5, 1994, the main library building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst was named for him.

Many present-day scholars credit Du Bois with sublime brilliance regarding his articulation of American black protest against racial oppression. As the sole, black co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Du Bois holds a unique place in America's historical struggle to make tangible the promises of Democracy. He is also seen as having been an influential figure with regard to the Pan-African Movement, since the convening of the first Pan-African Congress in 1919. Black America has W.E.B. Du Bois to thank for the massive popularization of "The Talented Tenth" theory. The idea that a college-educated, articulate, cultured, and meritorious elite would arise from the ranks of the black masses and point the way to a better racial future, compelled many young blacks to aspire for academic excellence, in order to be qualified when the opportunity for leadership presented itself.

On a different note, Du Bois bears the main responsibility for an acrimonious leadership split that created two black Americas and weakened the group's solidarity. Because his own sociological theories and proposals were virtually ignored by influential, majority-group reformers, Du Bois took umbrage. He subsequently decided that if his own pioneering efforts would not be given top-priority consideration, then he would see to it that Booker T. Washington's influence would diminish as well. In his own mind, the Atlantan professor canonized his differences with Washington and the Tuskegee elders. Du Bois thus came to hold his own viewpoint as the ultimate, most enlightened standard, and he was easily incensed at those who did not see the issues as he saw them. He thereby left a legacy of striving for individual recognition at the expense of the entire group's long-term benefit. This is seen in his venomous attacks on other capable leaders such as Marcus Garvey, and in his problem with acknowledging the validity of programs that were complementary to his own.

Biographies

David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (Owl Books 1994). Winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Biography[4]
David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 (Owl Books 2001). Covers the second half of the life of W.E.B. Du Bois, charting 44 years of the culture and politics of race in the United States. Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography [5].
Manning Marable, W.E.B Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Paradigm Publishers 2005).

Books, Publications, and Articles by W.E.B Du Bois

Among those listed below, the most important are probably Black Reconstruction (1935); Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race (1939); Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940); and Color and Democracy (1945).

The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America: 1638–1870 Ph.D. dissertation, 1896, (Harvard Historical Studies, Longmans, Green, and Co.: New York) Full Text
The Study of the Negro Problems (1898)
The Philadelphia Negro (1899)
The Negro in Business (1899)
The Evolution of Negro Leadership. The Dial, 31 (July 16, 1901).
The Souls of Black Folk. 1903/1999 ISBN 039397393X
The Talented Tenth, second chapter of The Negro Problem, a collection of articles by African Americans (September 1903).
Voice of the Negro II (September 1905)
John Brown: A Biography (1909 in literature|1909)
Efforts for Social Betterment among Negro Americans (1909)
Atlanta University's Studies of the Negro Problem (1897-1910)
The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911 in literature|1911)
The Negro (1915)
Darkwater (1920 in literature|1920)
The Gift of Black Folk (1924 in literature|1924)
Dark Princess: A Romance (1928 in literature|1928)
Africa, its Geography, People and Products (1930)
Africa: Its Place in Modern History (1930)
Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (1935 in literature|1935)
What the Negro has Done for the United States and Texas (1936)
Black Folk, Then and Now (1939)
Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940 in literature|1940)
Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945 in literature|1945)
The Encyclopedia of the Negro (1946 in literature|1946)
The World and Africa (1946)
Peace is Dangerous (1951)
I take my stand for Peace (1951)
In Battle for Peace (1952)
The Black Flame: A Trilogy
The Ordeal of Mansart (1957 in literature|1957)
Mansart Builds a School (1959 in literature|1959)
Africa in Battle Against Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism (1960)
Worlds of Color (1961 in literature|1961)
An ABC of Color: Selections from Over a Half Century of the Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois (1963 in literature|1963)
The World and Africa, An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa has Played in World History (1965 in literature|1965)
The Autobiography of W.E. Burghardt Du Bois (International publishers, 1968)
The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, 1897, No. 2 "The Conservation Of Races" full text

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References and External Links

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century. New York: International Publishers Co. Inc., 1968, pp. 438-440.
Online articles by Du Bois
"A Biographical Sketch of W.E.B. Du Bois" by Gerald C. Hynes
Review materials for studying W.E.B. Du Bois
FBI File of William E.B. Du Bois
The W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual University
Fighting Fire with Fire: African Americans and Hereditarian Thinking, 1900-1942
The Talented Tenth
W.E.B. Du Bois and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity
WEBDuBois.org
Works by W. E. B. Du Bois. Project Gutenberg

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