W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, (1868-1963), was an American civil rights leader.

He was born on February 23, 1868 in the village of Great Barrington, Massachusetts[?] and became the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. Following this, he was to spend many years studying the lives and situations of African-Americans, applying social science to problems of race relations.

- W.E.B. Du Bois -

He was to become one of the more notable political activists on behalf of African-Americans. A contemporary of Booker T. Washington, he argued with the latter in print about African-American acceptance of issues such as segregation. In 1909 he helped to found the NAACP.

In his later years, W. E. B. Du Bois became increasingly disillusioned with both black capitalism[?] and the United States. He emigrated to Ghana in 1961 and joined the Communist Party there. He died on August 27, 1963 in Ghana.

In 1992, the United States honored W. E. B. Du Bois with his portrait on a postage stamp.

Bibliography

• The Souls of Black Folk[?] (1903)
• Dark Princess[?] (1928)
• "The Evolution of Negro Leadership" published in The Dial 31 (July 16, 1901).
• "The Talented Tenth" published as the second chapter of The Negro Problem, a collection of articles by African Americans.

External Link

• The Souls of Black Folk, Project Gutenberg edition (ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext96/soulb10.html)