W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) Dubois was born on February 23, 1868
in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was one of the most influential black
leaders of the first half of the 20th Century. Dubois shared in the founding
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP,
in 1909. He served as its director of research and editor of its magazine,
"Crisis," until 1934. Dubois was the first African American to receive a
Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1896. Between 1897 and 1914 Dubois conducted
numerous studies of black society in America, publishing 16 research papers.
He began his investigations believing that social science could provide
answers to race problems. Gradually he concluded that in a climate of virulent
racism, social change could only be accomplished by agitation and protest.
At the turn of the century Dubois had been a supporter of black capitalism.
Throughout his career he moved steadily to the political left. By 1905 he
had been drawn to socialist ideas and remained sympathetic to Marxism throughout
his life. Dubois acted in support of integration and equal rights for everyone
regardless of race, but his thinking often exhibited a degree of black separatist-nationalist
tendencies. In 1961 Dubois became completely disillusioned with the United
States. He moved to Ghana, joined the Communist Party, and a year later renounced
his American Citizenship. August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March
On Washington, Dubois died in Accra, Ghana, shortly after becoming a Ghanan
citizen.
