W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) is an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grows up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he is the first African American to earn a doctorate, he becomes a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University.

Due to his contributions in the African-American community heis seen as a member of a Black elite that supports some aspects of eugenics for blacks.

Du Bois is one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Before that, Du Bois had risen to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists that wanted equal rights for blacks.

Du Bois and his supporters oppose the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provides that Southern blacks will work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks will receive basic educational and economic opportunities.

Instead, Du Bois insists on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believes will be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite.

He refers to this group as the Talented Tenth, a concept under the umbrella of Racial uplift, and believes that African Americans need the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.

Racism is the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protests against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment.

His cause includes people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies.

He is a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helps organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for the independence of African colonies from European powers.

Du Bois makes several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia.

After the First World War, he surveys the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documents widespread prejudice and racism in the United States military.

Du Bois is a prolific author.

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, challenges the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks are responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era.

Borrowing a phrase from Frederick Douglass, he popularizes the use of the term color line to represent the injustice of the separate but equal doctrine prevalent in American social and political life.

He opens The Souls of Black Folk with the central thesis of much of his life's work: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line."

His 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn is regarded in part as one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology, and he publishes two other life stories, all three containing essays on sociology, politics and history. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, he publishes many influential pieces.

Du Bois believes that capitalism is a primary cause of racism, and he is generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life.

He is an ardent peace activist and advocates nuclear disarmament.

The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, will be enacted a year after his death.

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