William Edward Burghardt Du Bois later known as W EB Dubois was born in Great Barrington Massachusetts on February 23rd 1868 as a young man Dubois received a BA from Fisk University before becoming the first african-american to earn a PhD from Harvard in 1895 what is impressive about wvb Dubois when he went to Harvard they wouldn't accept his four-year Fiske degree the boys also faced the problem of not being allowed to stay on the Harvard campus after 6 p.m. so if you put it in context historically it was a great feat while teaching at Atlantic University
Du Bois produced a number of academic works including the Philadelphia Negro in 1899 the first case study of a black community in the United States Du Bois went into these blighted areas he found a population that had terrible health issues a lot of social ills such as poverty high infant mortality prostitution he didn't entirely excuse the african-american population but in his analysis he was very forceful about pointing out racism as a reason for a lot of these ills both Du Bois and Booker T Washington emerged as advocates of their race however as an alternative voice
to Washington's book up from slavery Du Bois published the souls of black folk in 1903 it was an absolutely unique book it contains poetry Auto biographical sketches historical articles memoir a wide-ranging representation of the diversity of black experience in 1905 Dubois founded the Niagara movement opposing Booker T Washington's racial accommodation theory the organization became the forerunner of the n-double a-c-p and years later Dubois was appointed editor of the n-double a-c-p magazine the crisis to voice wanted the crisis to have two main components protests on the one hand and uplift on the other at the same
time that he was protesting lynching and race riots he was building a consciousness while continuing his work for civil rights Du Bois published his first novel the quest of the silver fleece in 1911 four years later he published the Negro the first general history of black Africans he was one of the early scholars who felt like you could not understand the status and condition of blacks the United States unless you came to terms with the status condition of Africa in 1920 Dubois published the first of his three autobiographies entitled dark water voices from within the
veil then in 1935 Du Bois published his magnum opus black reconstruction in America with his three autobiographies and in a sense you could say his body of work Du Bois gave us a document of what it was like to be black in the American century while becoming more influenced by communism Du Bois made a losing bid for the New York State Senate at the age of 82 by 1961 Du Bois joined the Communist Party and moved to Ghana where he died on August 27 1963 WB Dubois can be deemed arguably the most profound African American
intellectual of his generation his ideas are still highly relevant for the present generation of scholars you
