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A
Biographical Sketch By
Gerald C. Hynes Introduction A harbinger of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, he died
in self-imposed exile in his home away from home with his ancestors of a
glorious past—Africa. Labeled as a "radical," he was ignored by those who
hoped that his massive contributions would be buried along side of him. But, as
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "history cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois
because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and
a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest
for truth about his own people. There were very few scholars who concerned
themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense
void. The degree to which he succeeded disclosed the great dimensions of the
man." His Formative Years While in high school DuBois showed a keen concern for the
development of his race. At age fifteen he became the local correspondent for
the New York Globe. And in this position he conceived it his duty to push
his race forward by lectures and editorials reflecting upon the need of Black
people to politicized themselves. DuBois was naturally gifted intellectually and took
pleasurable pride in surpassing his fellow students in academic and other
pursuits. Upon graduation from high school, he, like many other New England
students of his caliber, desired to attend Harvard. However, he lacked the
financial resources to go to that institution. But with the aid of friends and
family, and a scholarship he received to Fisk College (now University), he
eagerly headed to Nashville, Tennessee to further his education. This was DuBois' first trip south. And in those three years at
Fisk (1885–1888) his knowledge of the race problem became more definite. He
saw discrimination in ways he never dreamed of, and developed a determination to
expedite the emancipation of his people. Consequently, he became a writer,
editor, and an impassioned orator. And in the process acquired a belligerent
attitude toward the color bar. 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 (via
scholarships) classified as a junior. As a student his education focused on
philosophy, centered in history. It then gradually began to turn toward
economics and social problems. As determined as he was to attend and graduate
from Harvard, he never felt himself a part of it. Later in life he remarked
"I was in Harvard but not of it." 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.
However, shortly before that, ex-president Rutherford B. Hayes, the current head
of a fund to educate Negroes, was quoted in the Boston Herald as claiming
that they could not find one worthy to enough for advanced study abroad. DuBois'
anger inspired him to apply directly to Hayes. His credentials and references
were impeccable. He not only received a grant, but a letter from Hayes saying
that he was misquoted. DuBois chose to study at the University of Berlin in
Germany. It was considered to be one of the world's finest institutions of
higher learning. And DuBois felt that a doctor's degree from there would infer
unquestionable preparation for ones life's work. 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 had completed a draft of his dissertation and 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. Which of course he was
obliged to do. His doctoral thesis, The Suppression of the African Slave
Trade in America, remains the authoritative work on that subject, and is the
first volume in Harvard's Historical Series. Easing On Down The Road The year 1896 was the dawn of a new era for DuBois. With his
doctorate degree and two undistinguished years at Wilberforce behind him, he
readily accepted a special fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania to
conduct a research project in Philadelphia's seventh ward slums. This
responsibility afforded him the opportunity to study Blacks as a social system. DuBois plunged eagerly into his research. He was certain that
the race problem was one of ignorance. And he was determined to unearth as much
knowledge as he could, thereby providing the "cure" for color
prejudice. His relentless studies led into historical investigation, statistical
and anthropological measurement, and sociological interpretation. The outcome of
this exhaustive endeavor was published as The Philadelphia Negro.
"It revealed the Negro group as a symptom, not a cause; as a striving,
palpitating group, and not an inert, sick body of crime; as a long historic
development and not a transient occurrence." This was the first time such a
scientific approach to studying social phenomena was undertaken, and as a
consequence DuBois is acknowledged as the father of Social Science. After the completion of the study, DuBois accepted a position
at Atlanta University to further his teachings in sociology. For thirteen years
there he wrote and studied Negro morality, urbanization, Negroes in business,
college-bred Negroes, the Negro church, and Negro crime. He also repudiated the
widely held view of Africa as a vast cultural cipher by presenting a historical
version of complex, cultural development throughout Africa. His studies left no
stone unturned in his efforts to encourage and help social reform.. It is said
that because of his outpouring of information "there was no study made of
the race problem in America which did not depend in some degree upon the
investigations made at Atlanta University." During this period an ideological controversy grew between
DuBois and Booker T. Washington, which later grew into a bitter personal battle.
Washington from 1895, when he made his famous "Atlanta Compromise"
speech, to 1910 was the most powerful black man in the America. Whatever grant,
job placement or any endeavor concerning Blacks that influential whites received
was sent to Washington for endorsement or rejection. Hence, the "Tuskegee
Machine" became the focal point for Black input/output. DuBois was not
opposed to Washington's power, but rather, he was against his
ideology/methodology of handling the power. On one hand Washington decried political
activities among Negroes, and on the other hand dictated Negro political
objectives from Tuskegee. Washington argued the Black people should temporarily forego
"political power, insistence on civil rights, and higher education of Negro
youth. They should concentrate all their energies on industrial education."
DuBois believed in the higher education of a "Talented Tenth" who
through their knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro into a
higher civilization. (See Chapter 4, "Science and Empire" in DuBois' Dusk
of Dawn.) The culmination of the conflict came in 1903 when DuBois
published his now famous book, The Souls of Black Folks. The chapter
entitled "Of Booker T. Washington and Others" contains an analytical
discourse on the general philosophy of Washington. DuBois edited the chapter
himself to keep the most controversial and bitter remarks out of it.
Nevertheless, it still was more than enough to incur Washington's continued
contempt for him. In the early summer of 1905 Washington went to Boston to
address a rally. While speaking he was verbally assaulted by William Monroe
Trotter ( a Harvard college friend of DuBois). The subsequent jailing of Trotter
on trumped-up charges, apparently by Washingtonites, raised the wrath of DuBois.
This incident caused DuBois to solicit help from others "for organized
determination and aggressive action on the part of men who believe in Negro
freedom and growth. (Emphasis mine) Twenty-nine men from fourteen states answered the call in
Buffalo, New York. Five months later in January of 1906 the "Niagara
Movement" was formed. So called after the cite of the meeting place–the
Canadian side of Niagara falls. (They were prevented from meeting on the U.S.
side.) Its objectives were to advocate civil justice and abolish caste
discrimination. The downfall of the group was attributed to public accusations
of fraud and deceit instigated and engineered presumably by Washington
advocates, and DuBois' inexperience with organizations and the internal strain
from the dynamic personality of Trotter. In 1909 all members of the Niagara
Movement save one (Trotter, who despised and distrusted whites and their
objectives) merged with some white liberals and thus the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was born. DuBois was not
altogether pleased with the group but agreed to stay on as Director of
Publications and Research. The main artery for distributing NAACP policy and news
concerning Blacks was the Crisis magazine, which DuBois autocratically
governed as its editor-in-chief for some twenty-five years. He was of no mind to
follow pedantically the Associations views, and therefore wrote only that
which he felt could lift the coffin lid off his people. His hot, raking editorials oftentimes lead to battles within
the ranks of the Association. Besides this, the NAACP was, at that time, under
the leadership of whites, to which DuBois objected. He always felt that Blacks
should lead and that if whites were to be included at all, it should be in a
supportive role. The meteoric and sustained rise in the circulation of the Crisis,
making it self-supporting, tranquilized the moderates within the Association.
This afforded DuBois the ability to continue his assault on the injustices
heaped upon the Blacks. World War I had dramatic affects on the lives of Black folks.
Firstly, the Armed Forces refused Black inductees, but finally relinquished and
put the "colored folks" in subservient roles. Secondly, while the war
was raging, Blacks in the southern states were moving North where industry was
desperately looking for workers. Ignorant, frightened whites, led by capitalist
instigators, were fearful that Blacks would totally consume the job market.
Thus, lynching ran rampant. Finally, after the war, Black veterans returned home
to the same racist country they had fought so heroically to defend. Dr. DuBois, using the Crisis as his vehicle, hurled
thunderbolts of searing script, scorching the "dusty veil," and
revealing the innards of a country whose quivering heart beat bigotry. So
vitriolic and eloquent was his pen, that subsequent reaction from his followers
caused congressional action to:
His
articles never quit. The countryside was inundated with DuBoisian unmitigated
protest. This period marked the height of DuBois' popularity. The Crisis
magazine subscription rate had grown from 1000 in 1909 to over 10,000 in May of
1919. His "Returning Soldier" editorial climaxed the period. "By
the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we
do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight the forces of hell in
our own land. We
return. Shortly
after the Armistice was signed, DuBois, sailed for France in 1919 to represent
the NAACP as an observer at the Peace Conference. While there he decided it was
an opportune time to organize a Pan-African conference to bring attention to the
problems of Africans around the world. While this was not the first Pan-African
Congress (the first one was held in 1900), he had long been interested in the
movement. While
the concept was lauded by a few revolutionaries, it failed because of lack of
interest by the more influential Black organizations. DuBois
realized that for Africans could be free anywhere, they must be free everywhere.
He therefore decided to hold another Pan-African meeting in 1921. While this one
was better organized, he was dealt double trouble. First, following the war,
"a political and social revolution, economic upheaval and depression,
national and racial hatred made a setting in which any such movement was
entirely out of the Question." More importantly, however, was the encounter
with the astonishing Marcus Garvey. "Unlike
DuBois, Garvey was able to gain mass support and had tremendous appeal." He
established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) for the purpose
of uniting Africa and her descendants. He instituted the visionary concept of
buying ships for overseas trade and travel; he issued forth uncompromising
orations on race relations and inspiration ("Up you mighty people. You can
accomplish what you will!"); and held pageants and parades through "Harlems"
with red, black, and green liberation flags flying (The colors symbolizes the
skin, the blood, and the hopes and growth potential of Black people. The green
is also symbolic of the earth.). His methodology was refreshing and inspiring.
And it was in direct contrast to the intellectual style of DuBois. DuBois'
first efforts were to explain away the Garvey movement and ignore it . But it
was a mass movement and could not be ignored. Later,
when Garvey began to collect money for his steamship line, DuBois characterized
him as "a hard-working idealist, but his methods are bombastic, wasteful,
illogical and almost illegal." Marcus Garvey, choosing to ignore the
critiques of DuBois, continued with his undertakings until charges of fraud were
brought forth against him. He was imprisoned and upon his release, he was exiled
from the United States. He died in 1941. The
conflict between the two men was amplified by the white press. It also served to
debilitate the progress of the future planned Pan-African Congress.
Nevertheless, DuBois held his conference in 1923, and as expected the turnout
was small. When
the conference was concluded, he set sail for Africa for the first time. During
the trip through "the eternal world of Black folk" he made a
characteristic observation–"The world brightens as it darkens." His
racial romanticism was given free reign as he wrote–"The spell of Africa
is upon me ..." Ideology
Change The
Russian Revolution of 1917 illuminated and made clear the change in his basic
thought. The revolution concerned itself with the problem of poverty.
"Russia was trying to put into the hands of those people who do the world's
work the power to guide and rule the state for the best welfare of the
masses." DuBois' trip to Russia in 1927, his learning about Marx and Engles,
his seeing the beginning of a new nation form with regard to class, prompted him
to say–"My day in Russia was the day of communist beginnings." "He
could no longer support integration as present tactics and relegated it to a
long range goal. Unable to trust white politicians, white capitalists of white
workers he invested everything in the segregated socialized economy."
(Shades of Washingtonianism?) His ideology carried over to his editorials in the
Crisis magazine. By
1930 he had become thoroughly convinced that the basic policies and ideals of
the NAACP must be modified and/or discarded. There were two alternatives:
By
1933 DuBois decided his financial, organizational and ideological battles with
the NAACP were unendurable, and he recommended that the Crisis suspend
its operation. (The Crisis magazine, however, is still in existence
today.) He
resumed his duties at Atlanta University and there upon completed two major
works. His book Black Reconstruction dealt with the socio-economic
development of the nation after the Civil War. This masterpiece portrayed the
contributions of the Black people to this period, whereas before, the Blacks
were always portrayed as disorganized and chaotic. His second book of this
period, Dusk of Dawn, was completed in 1940 and expounded his concepts
and views on both the African's and African American's quest for freedom. As
in years past, DuBois never relented in attacks upon imperialism, especially in
Africa. (His book entitled The World and Africa was written as a
contradiction to the pseudo-historians who consistently omitted Africa from
world history.) In 1945 he served as an associate consultant to the American
delegation at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco. He
charged the world organization with planning to be dominated by imperialist
nations and not intending to intervene on the behalf of colonized countries. He
announced that the fifth Pan-African Congress would convene to determine what
pressure could be applied to the world powers. This
conference was dotted with an all-star cast:
The
congress elected DuBois International President and cast him a "Father of
Pan-Africanism." Thus,
"W.E.B. DuBois entered into his last phase as a protest propagandist,
committed beyond a single social group to a world conception of proletarian
liberation." Alienation As
the chairman of the Peace Information Center, he demanded the outlawing of
atomic weapons. The Secretary of State denounced it as Soviet propaganda.
Jumping at the chance to quiet "that old man," the U.S. Department of
Justice ordered DuBois and others to register as agents of a "foreign
principal." DuBois refused and was immediately indicted under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act. Sufficient evidence was lacking, therefore DuBois was
acquitted. The subversive activity initiated by the U.S. government acted as a
catalyst in the alienation DuBois already felt for the present system. His
feelings were heard around the world in 1959. While in Peking he told a large
audience–"In my own country for nearly a century I have been nothing but
a NIGGER." By the time the U.S. press published the account, he was
residing in Ghana; an expatriate from the United States. President Nkruma
welcomed DuBois and asked him to direct the government-sponsored Encyclopedia
Africana. The offer was accepted graciously and a year later, in the final
months of his life, DuBois became a Ghanian citizen and an official member of
the Communist party. Free
At Last His
role as a pioneering Pan-Africanist was memorialized by the few who understood
the genius of the man and neglected by the many who were afraid that his
loquacious espousals would unite the oppressed throughout the world into
revolution. Major
References Other
References Some
of the Major Offerings of W.E.B. DuBois From:
http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html DuBois
Biography
W.E.B.
Du Bois's biographer, Manning Marable, writes that "Few intellectuals have
done more to shape the twentieth century than W.E.B. Du Bois." His life
covered a tremendous range of activities and movements. Du Bois was both an
intellectual and a social activist. He was both a man of theory who held an
elitist philosophy and a man who could move thousands of people into action. He
was an American who tried to uphold the ideals of his country. But died in exile
having renounced his citizenship. William
Edward Burghardt DuBois (he pronounced it DueBoyss) entered the world
on February 23, 1868, less than three years after the Thirteenth
Amendment had outlawed slavery. The Du Bois family, however, was
several generations removed from bondage. He was born in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, a small village with only a handful of black families. His
teachers quickly made him a favorite, and most of his playmates were white.
While in Nashville, Tennessee, attending Fisk University, he discovered his
black identity. He spent his summers teaching in rural schools. It was there
that he met "the real seat of slavery." Never before had he
encountered such overwhelming poverty. "I touched intimately the lives of
the commonest of mankind--people who ranged from barefooted dwellers on dirt
floors, with patched rags for clothes, to rough hard-working farmers, with plain
clean plenty." Unlike Massachusetts, Nashville was a southern town that
exposed Du Bois to the everyday bigotry he had escaped growing up. He
accidentally bumped into a white woman who spurned his apology: "How dare
you speak to me, you impudent nigger!" By the end of his college years Du
Bois had begun to take pride in his heritage. "I am a Negro; and I glory in
the name." Du
Bois graduated from Fisk and entered Harvard
University, where he received his A.B., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, the
first African-American to receive a doctorate from that university. He also
spent two years studying at the University of Berlin, which was at the time the
world's most distinguished center for advanced research in history. His doctoral
dissertation was a study of the efforts to suppress the African slave trade. He
accepted a position teaching at Wilberforce University, a college for black
students in Ohio. After an unhappy year, he left to be a researcher at the
University in Pennsylvania. There he studied the African-American immigrants to
Philadelphia. He published The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study in
1899, the first serious sociological study of the emerging black urban
population. In
1897 Du Bois accepted a new position at Atlanta University. It was there that he
began to enter the realm of political activism that would dominate the rest of
his life. He began to help black people devise a strategy for confronting the
growing pattern of discrimination that they were facing. Beginning
in 1863 large numbers of African-Americans won their freedom. The Thirteenth
Amendment formalized what had already taken place: slavery was no
more. During the Reconstruction years, black people secured additional rights.
In 1868 the Fourteenth
Amendment required states to provide "equal protection"
without regard to race. In 1870 the Fifteenth
Amendment prohibited states from denying anyone the vote because of
race. But African-Americans soon lost most of these rights. By the 1870s groups
like the Ku Klux Klan were using violence to terrorize black people from voting
or asserting their other constitutional rights. In some years lynch mobs killed
over 100 black people. During the 1890s and early 1900s southern states passed
"Jim Crow Laws" which required black people to stay out of public
places that served whites. Separate restaurants, hotels, railroad cars, toilets,
drinking fountains, etc. began to appear. Southern states passed laws that
required voters to take confusing tests to qualify to vote. In some states these
also excluded uneducated whites. Other states passed "grandfather
clauses" which gave the vote to those persons whose grandfathers had
qualified to vote in 1867 -- before black people had won the right to vote. African-Americans
responded to these conditions in a variety of ways. One response was to leave
the South for a more desirable environment, where their rights would be
respected and where there was economic opportunity. During the 1870s and early
1880s thousands of black people moved to Kansas, some of whom participated in
the great "Kansas Exodus" and became known as "Exodusters."
By the 1890s, however, northern cities had become the destination for black
people leaving the South. Between 1890 and 1910 200,000 black people migrated to
northern cities. These were the migrants whom Du Bois studied while at the
University of Pennsylvania. A
second response was to seek some kind of accommodation within the limited
opportunities whites were offering. In 1895 Booker
T. Washington gave a speech in Atlanta that spelled out his approach.
Black people should set aside their goals for social and political equality and
concentrate on economic advancement. He criticized the day when "a seat in
Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial
skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than
starting a dairy farm or truck garden." Washington urged that
African-Americans acquire industrial skills such as carpentry and masonry. Once
they held these skills, he believed, whites would give them the opportunities
they deserved. "The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is
worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an
opera-house." Du
Bois proposed a third alternative. He attacked Washington's claim that
"with freedom, Negro leadership should have begun at the plow and not in
the Senate." That
claim is a: "foolish
and mischievous lie; two hundred and fifty years that black serf toiled at the
plow and yet that toiling was in vail till the Senate passed the war amendments;
and two hundred and fifty years more the half-free serf of today may toil at his
plow, but unless he have political rights . . . he will still remain the
poverty-stricken and ignorant plaything of rascals, that he now is. Du
Bois met with black critics of Washington, who were calling themselves
"anti-Bookerties." In 1905 they met on the Canadian side of the
Niagara River, and created the "Niagara
Movement." They declared that all discrimination is
"barbarous." Their solution was to call for "persistent manly
agitation." They denounced legal segregation, the exclusion of black people
from labor unions, and the denial of voting and civil rights. The
Niagara Movement failed to get a significant following. Booker
T. Washington used his influence to undermine the effort. Personal
conflicts between Du Bois and some members led to its ultimate demise. But in
1909 Du Bois attended a National Negro Conference held by white progressives,
sympathetic to the idea of challenging Washington's leadership. Du Bois joined
the interracial organization that emerged from this meeting. In 1910 he left
Atlanta University and became director of publicity and research for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Until 1934
he would edit the organization's magazine, the Crisis. By 1914 the NAACP had
fifty branch offices and over six thousand members. By the end of the decade Du
Bois's editorials were being read by over 100,000 people. He had finally
achieved something of a mass following. His position allowed him to critique all
aspects of discrimination and to demand that white America accept black people
on equal terms. He had crossed the boundaries that were before him and had made
vital connections. Du
Bois's tenure at the Crisis
saw the triumph of the women's suffrage movement. He devoted several issues of
the Crisis to women's rights. He believed that the struggle for democracy
required the emancipation of all women and of black people. Several prominent
suffragists, Florence Kelley and Jane Addams, were active supporters of the NAACP.
But Du Bois also recognized that many suffragists were willing to seek
segregationist votes for their cause. A Mississippi suffragist advocated giving
women the vote to insure "immediate and durable white supremacy."
Nevertheless he continued to support the call for suffrage, "As an
intelligent, self-supporting human being, a woman had just as good a right to a
voice in her own government as has any man." Although
he advocated the cause of women's equality, Du Bois often did not practice what
he preached. He replaced Ida B. Wells-Barnett with Dr. Charles E. Bentley on the
NAACP's Committee of Forty, which infuriated the militant anti-lynching
activist. Du Bois's seexism was evident in his home life. He was a loyal
husband, in part because he believed that there were too many negative
stereotypes about the black family. As a prominent African-American leader he
needed to maintain the appearance of a strong family life, whatever the
emotional costs. Although he remained married for over half a century, he and
his wife, Nina Gomer, grew emotionally distant. He did not see her as his
intellectual equal. He saw her not as a person in her own right, but as an
extension of himself. In the words of his most thorough biographer, David
Levering Lewis, "Du Bois proved to be consistently patriarchal in his role
as husband and father. The all-too-commonplace truth is that he increasingly
acted as a well-intentioned tyrant at best and a bullying hypocrite at
worst." Du
Bois believed that his work for equality went beyond the needs of black people
in the United States. Throughout the world, people of African dissent were under
the control of Europeans. By the early 20th century most of Africa was a colony
of Europe. As early as 1900 Du Bois was participating in meetings of Africans
and African-Americans. In 1918 the NAACP
asked him to investigate the treatment of black soldiers in France, fighting in
World War I. While there he helped organize the first meeting of the Pan-African
Congress, which met in Paris in 1919. The Congress considered how to handle the
African colonies of the now defeated German army. Du Bois's resolutions called
for turning over the German colonies to an international organization that would
begin to prepare them for independence. Du Bois believed that the "dark
majority of mankind," would not always be "ruled by the white
minority." Throughout his life he linked the strivings of black people in
America to those in Africa. In so doing he helped inspire Africans to demand ful
independence from their European colonizers. Du
Bois's sense of a common identity among all African people grew out of his
beliefs on race. He always urged black people to take pride in their heritage.
He also recognized that to be both black and an American was to have a kind of
dual experience. "It is a peculiar sensation, this sense of always looking
at one's self through the eys of others." He claimed that "One ever
feels his two-ness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body." Consequently,
Du Bois developed a theory that emphasized race as a distinct quality. Most
scientists today maintain that race is a social creation that does not have any
biological meaning. Studies of genes reveal that people with "black"
skin are more likely to share common characteristics with "white"
people than with their fellow members of their so-called race. But in Du Bois's
time, most scientists believed that race was a concept that defined important
qualities in individuals. They believed that certain behaviors and values were
inherent attributes of members of certain races. Du Bois did not challenge these
beliefs. He believed that black people possessed a certain genius. Africans and
their descendants were a spiritual people in the midst of materialistic America.
Far from trying to destroy color consciousness, Du Bois came to celebrate it. He
came to believe that black people should support black businesses, churches,
schools, and newspapers and become a self-segregated community. This
notion proved to be the issue that led to Du Bois's break with the NAACP.
In the Crisis
in 1934 he editorialized in support of separate schools. He argued that black
people needed to control their own education. This would require separate
schools and separate communities to "increase economic cooperation,
organized self-defense and necessary self- confidence." African-Americans,
"must stop being stampeded by the word segregation." NAACP Executive
Director, Walter White, rejected this argument. The NAACP had always
"resolutely fought" segregation. To accept this would mean
"inferior accommodations and a distinctly inferior position in national and
communal life." Du Bois responded with a personal attack on the very
light-skinned leader: "In the first place, Walter White is white. He has
more white companions and friends than colored." In May 1934, the NAACP
board voted to censure Du Bois who promptly resigned. For
the next decade Du Bois served as professor and chairman of the sociology
department at Atlanta University. During this period he wrote extensively,
publishing a major work on the history of the Reconstruction period. He also
took an extensive world tour, and founded a journal, Phylon, which examined
issues of race. His years after leaving the NAACP saw Du Bois growing closer to
an organization that many Americans considered a major threat: the Communist
Party. Since
around World War I Du
Bois had been advocating some form of socialism. His primary
attraction was that socialism appealed to universal "brotherhood"
beyond the veil of color. He believed that society would naturally evolve into a
more cooperative manner of organization. Initially he was critical of the newly
formed Soviet Union. But he grew more supportive and visited it in 1926. He
claimed that he had never seen "such public interest in social matters on
the part of men, women and children." Part of the conflict Du Bois had with
the NAACP
stemmed from his growing radicalism. In 1930 he charged that after fighting
against discrimination, the NAACP needed to fight for "economic
equality" which would include the "socialization of wealth." His
study of Reconstruction reflected his growing intellectual debt to Marxism. The
central issue of the era concerned the control of labor. The Southern black
"proletariat" essentially staged a "general strike" against
the master class and created the institutions for democracy. Although white
historians largely ignored his work when it was first written, most major
historians working in the field today accept many of his ideas. In
the years after World War II a great fear of Communism swept across the United
States. Government officials and many private citizens attacked the patriotism
of those who spoke out against this fear. Du Bois did not join the Communist
Party until 1961. But his criticisms of American policy and his praises for
Soviet achievements led many to conclude that he was. Du Bois denounced the
"Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union and became
chairman of the Peace Information Center. In 1950 he ran for the United States
Senate as the candidate of the American Labor Party. Running on a peace
platform, Du Bois received over 200,000 votes. This level of support pleased
him. But the government's relentless attacks on him and his organization nearly
cost him his freedom. In 1951 a federal grand jury indicted Du Bois and other
officers of the Peace Information Center for "failure to register as agent
of a foreign principal." The organization, as its attorney pointed out,
"was conceived and conformed" by Americans and had no ties to foreign
governments. Nevertheless the assumption was that only a Soviet agent would be
advocating peace. When the government's case collapsed, the judge granted the
defense request for a directed acquittal. Although he was never convicted of any
crime, the United States government took away his passport and prohibited him
from the leaving the country between 1952 and 1958. With
his passport restored in 1958, Du Bois took another world tour visiting the
Soviet Union, China, and several western European countries. In 1961 a long-time
comrade from the Pan-African movement invited him to live in Ghana. Kwame
Nkrumah had led the fight for independence in what became the first black
African nation. Now the President of Ghana, Nkrumha welcomed his long-time
friend and co-worker. Du Bois accepted the invitation in order to work on what
he hoped would be a ten-volume Encyclopedia Africana. In 1963 he became a
citizen of Ghana and died on August 27 at age ninety-five. The following day
250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial as part of a great "march
on Washington." Martin
Luther King gave his passionate "I Have a Dream" speech.
Other speakers called for unrelenting protest to demand government action to
protect the rights of black people. But Du Bois was not forgotten. NAACP
Executive Director Roy Wilkins announced that Du Bois had died the previous day.
He told the gathered throng to remember that "his was the voice that was
calling you to gather here today in this cause." The civil right movement,
the subsequent gains that have occurred in the present, and those that will
occur in the future, are the fruits of the seeds which William
Edward Burghardt Du Bois planted. |