W.E.B.+Du+Bois



W.E.B. DuBois, William Edward Burghardt DuBois, was born on February 23, 1868. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In high school, DuBois showed a strong concern for the development of his race. When he was 15, he became the local correspondent for the New York Globe. Dubois was very smart and loves to help his peers. When he graduated, he wanted to attend Harvard but did not have the money but have help from friends and family, and a scholarship he received to Fisk College and headed to Nashville, Tennessee to further his education. When he was attending Fisk, He saw discrimination in ways he never dreamed of. He became a writer, editor, and an impassioned orator. Also, while at Fisk, DuBois spent two summers teaching at a county school in order to learn more about the South and his people. There he learned first hand of poverty, poor land, ignorance, and prejudice. But most importantly, he learned that his people had a deep desire for knowledge. After graduation from Fisk, DuBois entered Harvard with a scholarship as a junior. He received his bachelor's degree in 1890 and immediately began working toward his master's and doctor's degree. DuBois completed his master's degree in the spring of 1891. During the two years DuBois spent in Berlin, he began to see the race problems in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and the political development of Europe as one. This was the period of his life that united his studies of history, economics, and politics into a scientific approach of social research. DuBois needed another semester or so to finish his degree. But the men over his funding sources decided that the education he was receiving there was unsuitable for the type of work needed to help Negroes. They refused to extend him any more funds and encouraged him to obtain his degree from Harvard. In 1905 Du Bois was a founder and general secretary of the Niagara movement, an African American protest group of scholars and professionals. In 1909 Du Bois was among the founders of the [|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)] and from 1910 to 1934 served it as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of the //Crisis,// its monthly magazine. In 1934 Du Bois resigned from the NAACP board and from the //Crisis// because of his new advocacy of an African American nationalist strategy: African American controlled institutions, schools, and economic cooperatives. Du Bois died in Ghana on Aug. 27, 1963, on the eve of the civil rights march in Washington, D.C. He was given a state funeral, at which [|Kwame Nkrumah] remarked that he was "a phenomenon."



Hynes, Gerald C. __A Biographical Sketch of W.E.B. DuBois__. Ed. Herbert Aptheker. 1973. 16 Feb. 2009 .

__William Edward Burghardt Du Bois__. Ed. Biography R. Center. 2001. 20 Feb. 2009 .