W.E.B. Du Bois / Historian and Sociologist

(1868 - 1963)

*Biography:*	*William Edward Burghardt Du Bois* was born in Great Barrington, Mass. He graduate from Fisk University in Nashville in 1888, and went on to earn a second B. A. (1890), an M. A. (1891), and a Ph. D. In 1895, he became the first Black to receive a Ph. D. degree at Harvard University. He began his career teaching Greek and Latin at Wilberforce University (1894 - 96), and sociology at University of Pennsylvania (1896 - 97) and Atlanta University (1897 - 1910), where he returned later to chair the department of sociology (1933 - 44). *Du Bois* was one of the most important leaders of Black protest in the United States. During the first half of the 1900's, he became the leading black opponent of racial discrimination. He also won fame as a historian and sociologist. Historians still use Du Bois's research on blacks in American society. *Du Bois* strongly opposed the noted black educator *Booker T. Washington. Washington* believed that blacks could advance themselves faster through hard work than by demands for equal rights. *Du Bois* declared that blacks must speak out constantly against discrimination. According to *Du Bois, the best way to defeat prejudice was for college - educated blacks to lead the fight against it. To fight racial discrimination, Du Bois* founded the Niagara Movement in 1905. In 1909, he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). From 1910 to 1934, he was editor of the N.A.A.C.P magazine *THE CRISIS. Du Bois* left the N.A.A.C.P in 1934 and returned to the faculty at Atlanta University. From 1897 to 1910 Du Bois taught history and economics at Atlanta University. He attended the first Pan - African Conferences in Europe and United States. *Du Bois* became increasingly involved in pan-Africanism and Marxism. He set up international congresses for the exploration of these ideas, and in 1926 was invited to the Soviet Union, the first of several trips he would make to communist countries. His growing interest in Marxist ideology is evident in his most controversial book, *Black Reconstruction* (1935). *Du Bois* served as consultant to the United Nations when it was formed in 1945, as head of the Council on African Affairs, and, in 1949, as chair of Peace Information Center in New York. In the late 1940s and 1950s he was linked more and more with Communist groups, leading to his indictment by the U. S. Justice Department for failure to register as a foreign agent; he was later acquitted. In 1961, at the age of 93, he joined the Communist Party. With his second wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois (see "Graham"), whom he had married in 1951, *Bu Bois* took exile in Ghana in 1961 and worked the last two years of his life on the *Encyclopedia Africana,* sponsored by the government of Ghana. He was the first African-American to be elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and was also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In the 1920s, *Du Bois* lived at 606 St. Nicholas Avenue, and in the 1930s his address was 226 West 150th Street (the Dunbar Apartments). From 1945 to 1950 Du Bois lived at 409 Edgecombe Avenue. He died in Ghana.
*Sample Work:*	The Suppression of the African Slave Trade (1896); The Philadelphia Negro (1899); The Souls of Black Folk (1903); John Brown (1904); Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911); The Negro (1915); Darkwater (1928); The Gift of Black Folk (1924); Dark Princess (1928); Black Reconstruction (1935); Black Folk, Then and Now (1939); Dusk of Dawn (1940); Color and Democracy (1945); The World and African (1946).
*Bibliography:*	Anderson, 22, 105, 200. Arnold Braithwaite letter. Lewis, 5-11. Logan and wilson, 193-199. Low and clift, 326-328. Manhattan Address Telephone Directories. New York Times [obituary], Aug. 28, 1963, p. 33.