W.E.B. Dubois
1868 - 1963

by 
Susan Robinson

W.E.B. Dubois, the most influential African American intellectual of his day, shaped modern African American cultural values. 

William Edward Burghardt Dubois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the only child of Alfred and Mary Dubois.  There were few African Americans in Great Barrington, and William Edward was the only African American in his high school graduating class. 

Throughout his academic career, Dubois distinguished himself as a top student; he also displayed an early interest in the condition of the African American people by becoming a local correspondent for the New York Globe, an African American newspaper, at the age of fifteen.  A prolific writer throughout his life, he wrote, as a teenager, about the need for African Americans to advance in the American political arena.  Upon graduation he wished to attend Harvard, the top university in the nation; although his academic achievements were sufficient, he lacked financial resources, so in 1885 he accepted a scholarship to Fisk College instead, and spent the next few years at Fisk in Nashville, Tennessee.  While at Fisk, he spent two summers teaching at a local school; it was the first time he had been exposed to the harsh realities of African American life in the South.  This experience helped him to develop his ideas regarding the need for African American educational opportunities and cultural advancement.  

After graduating from Fisk in 1888, Dubois applied again to Harvard, he was accepted, and graduated from Harvard with a second bachelor’s degree in 1890.  His primary fields of study included history, philosophy, economics, and political science.  By 1891 he had also earned a master’s degree from that university and began working to obtain his doctorate.  He won a grant to study for two years in Berlin, Germany, and returned to take his doctorate, becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. 

Dubois wished to apply his education and experience to examine and improve the conditions of African Americans in this country, and he believed that using scientific methods to analyze social problems (social science) was the way to do it, an idea that has been almost universally accepted in recent times.  He accepted a teaching position (professor of French, English and literature) at Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he taught for two years.  In 1897 he moved to Atlanta University where he taught history and economics for thirteen years. 

As Dubois became increasingly aware of the obstacles with which Black Americans were forced to contend, his outlook on race relations evolved to advocate protests and political agitation with the purpose of effecting rapid change.  This view put him at odds with Booker T. Washington, whose philosophy was that African Americans should concentrate on developing technical and industrial skills that would elevate their economic circumstances, allowing social advancement (elimination of discriminatory laws, etc.) to follow gradually.  Through his stronger stance regarding the fight against racism, Dubois earned the reputation of being a “radical.” 

In 1905 Dubois founded an organization called the Niagara Movement, to develop political strategies for African Americans.  This group later merged with pre-existing White activist groups, to form the N.A.A.C.P.  W.E.B. Dubois was one of the original, founding members of the new organization.  Originally, most of the leaders of the N.A.A.C.P. were White, but as the organization evolved and grew in political power, Dubois pushed for Black leadership, with Whites in more of a supporting role.

He became the editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the N.A.A.C.P., continuing in this capacity for twenty-five years.    As editor, he wrote numerous scathing editorials against injustice, and his was the voice that called for actions and changes in laws to end lynching and discriminatory practices in the military.  Between 1909 and 1919 the number of subscribers to The Crisis grew from about 1,000 to 10,000. 

Dubois became involved in the Pan-African movement and organized several conferences involving African and African-American leadership.  The concept behind this movement was that no people of African descent could be free until all were free—many African countries at that time were still colonies of European nations, and the Pan-African movement examined methods for these countries to obtain independence and self-rule. 

Dubois became a critic of Marcus Garvey, a high-profile leader of a movement for people of African descent to unite and form a single, strong state in Africa.  Dubois did not agree with Garvey’s philosophies and methods and their ideological differences were the subject of much press. 

In 1923 Dubois visited Africa for the first time, writing that “The spell of Africa is upon me.”  His visit to Africa caused him to reflect upon his successes and failures through all his years of working to obtain civil rights for Black Americans, and he began to think of integration of American society as a long-range goal, perhaps not as immediately attainable as he had first hoped.  His political ideology began to shift to the left.  

In 1927, ten years after the Russian Revolution, he visited Russia to obtain firsthand knowledge about their communist system of government.  When he returned, he began to come in conflict more frequently with rest of the leadership of the N.A.A.C.P.   In 1933 he resigned as editor of The Crisis and returned to his teaching post at Atlanta University. 

He continued to write prolifically, and in 1945 served as a consultant to the American delegation at the conference in San Francisco that founded the United Nations.  He continued to be a major player at Pan-African conferences, and to speak vociferously against “imperialism.” 

In the 1950s, Dubois, who was then the chairman of an organization called the Peace Information Center, called for a ban on nuclear weapons.  This, among other things, caused him to become a target of McCarthyism, and he was indicted by the Department of Justice for failing to register as a foreign agent (they tried to show that he was an agent of the Russian government).  Dubois was acquitted of this charge, but the experience only heightened his disgust with the American government.  

W.E.B. Dubois, in his early nineties, became an expatriate and moved to Ghana.  At the age of 95 he renounced his American citizenship and became a citizen of Ghana, as well as an official member of the Communist Party.  He died a few months later.