W.E.B. Du Bois 1868-1963 Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, W.E.B. Du Bois became the most respected and effective spokesperson for the full rights of African Americans in the decades before World War II. In 1888 Du Bois earned an A.B. at Fiske University, where he had his first experience of overt racial prejudice. Returning to Massachusetts, he earned his M.A. at Harvard and then spent two years studying at the University of Berlin before becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. Du Bois taught at Wilberforce University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Atlanta University. Throughout his life Du Bois combined an illustrious academic career with his work for full rights for African Americans. He is perhaps best known for his work in founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 and helping it to become the countrys single most influential organization for African Americans. Du Bois argued for the creation of a black elite which would win social equality for African Americans by winning the respect of powerful educated whites. Frustrated by the slow progress in civil rights at home, he increasingly looked abroad, espousing the cause of Pan-Africanism, for which he won the NAACPs highest honor, the Spingarn award, in 1920. But in 1934 he resigned from the NAACP to protest their goal of accommodation with white society. Increasingly disillusioned with life in the United States, he visited Europe and the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1959. In 1961 he announced that he had joined the Communist Party and emigrated to Accra, Ghana, at age 93. He died there two years later.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:43:38 +0000
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