W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois photo

W.E.B. Du Bois is a Top 100 AALBC.com Bestselling Author Making Our List 17 Times

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868 - 1963)
(circa 1907 W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst)

In This speech Du Bois Criticizes Capitalism

Among the greatest scholars in American history stands Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois. A towering figure, a brilliant scholar and a prolific writer, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1890 he graduated cum laude from Harvard University and attended the University of Berlin in 1892. In 1896 Du Bois became the first Black person to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After teaching at Wilberforce University in Ohio and the University of Pennsylvania, he went on to establish the first department of sociology in the United States at Atlanta University.

Dr. Du Bois was the author of scores of significant books, including three major autobiographies. Among his most important works were The Philadelphia Negro in 1896, Souls of Black Folk in 1903, John Brown in 1909, Black Reconstruction in 1935, and Black Folk, Then and Now in 1939. His book, The Negro (first published in 1915), significantly influenced the lives of such pioneer Africanist scholars as Drusilla Dunjee Houston and William Leo Hansberry. In 1940 DuBois founded Phylon—a magazine published out of Atlanta University. Dr. DuBois also authored The World and Africa: An Inquiry Into the Part that Africa has Played in World History, a very important work first published in 1946.  In 1945 he played a major role at the historic Fifth Pan-African Conference held in Manchester, England.

In addition to his literary activities and profound scholarship, at one time or another during the course of his long life, DuBois could be characterized politically as an integrationist, Pan-Africanist, Socialist and Communist. He was a founding member of both the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, and editor of the Crisis—the NAACP literary organ. In 1961, during the twilight of his life, DuBois was honored by an invitation from President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to head a secretariat for an Encyclopedia Africana. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois died in Accra, Ghana August 27, 1963 as a Ghanaian citizen.

Bio Written by: Runoko Rashidi. Also read David Levering Lewis work on Dubois

Du Bois’ 2nd wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, was an accomplished author and important activist in her own right.

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16 Books by W.E.B. Du Bois