Was WEB Du Bois a Communist? The Later Years of NAACP Co-Founder and Civil Rights Activist

Today we will study and reflect on the last years of
WEB Du Bois, leading black activist and a co-founder
of the NAACP. We will reflect on questions like:
Was WEB Du Bois a communist?
Why did he resign from the NAACP, then later return,
and resign again?
Why did he live his final years in exile in Ghana?

We would like to emphasize that neither WEB Du Bois, nor
anyone from the NAACP, ever even hinted that the government
should be overthrown by a violent Bolshevik uprising. On the
contrary, the NAACP funded a decades long effort to slowly
reverse discrimination in the court system. If you ask Dr Google
about “WEB Du Bois firearms” you will discover that WEB Du
Bois and the NAACP did encourage blacks to exercise their
Second Amendment rights to bear arms for self-defense, which
was sometimes needed against armed white supremacists and
mobs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/01/30/negroes-and-the-gun-the-early-naacp-championed-armed-self-defense/

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this
video. Please feel free to follow along our PowerPoint script
posted to SlideShare. Please, we welcome interesting questions
in the comments. Let us learn and reflect together!

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Was WEB Du Bois a Communist?

Was WEB Du Bois a communist? The answer is YES: When
he turned 93, he joined and paid his dues to the CPUSA,
Communist Party. Most people are born in the first
chapters of their autobiography; but no, WEB Du Bois,
being ever the contrarian, chooses to extol the virtues of
communism in the opening chapters. Personally, I am
quite angry with him, why did he do that? It is political
poison for a black leader to announce he is a communist,
and now I must explain it. We will reflect on his growing
embrace of communism over the course of his life.

WEB Du Bois chooses to begin his
autobiography: “I believe in
communism. I mean by
communism, a planned way of life
in the production of wealth and
work designed for building a state
who seeks the highest welfare of
its people and not merely to profit
the few. I believe that all men
should be employed according to
their ability and that wealth and
services should be distributed
according to need.”

If we but reflect on the life experiences of WEB Du Bois, we can
understand the appeal of communism, or at least the theoretical
communism of Karl Marx, not the terrors of Soviet or Chinese
Communism. In his day, during the Jim Crow era, the
government denied due process and equality to blacks, they
were forced to work for starvation wages, and if blacks called the
police, often they were the ones arrested! Tens of thousands of
blacks were lynched during the Jim Crow years, and often the
police condoned or even participated in the lynchings. Progress
on improving civil rights was just glacial before the civil rights era
of the 1960’s.

https://youtu.be/JeRCM4PAqPk
https://youtu.be/JRdnB0lqN5o
https://youtu.be/2TCXcEpohaM https://youtu.be/sLDHs0AigvY

We cannot excuse this foolish decision to join the Communist
Party, but we can explain it. WEB Du Bois visited Soviet Russia in
the heady revolutionary days, before the Purge Trials of Stalin,
and he was duped into believing that this was a worker’s
paradise. There was genuine enthusiasm among the party
faithful, and there were many liberals who were so thoroughly
disgusted with capitalism when the economy collapsed in the
Depression, where there was so much economic misery and
unemployment, while Soviet Russia appeared, on the outside, to
be much more prosperous.

The Bolshevik by
Boris Kustodiev,
1920

This is how the
Bolsheviks rule
in the Cossack
villages.

Even the patrician President Franklin D Roosevelt was
disappointed with big business and their reaction to the
Depression. He insisted on appointing the socialist Henry
Wallace as his third Vice President, but he was so far left wing
that moderates and conservatives insisted on nominating Harry
Truman as the fourth Vice President. FDR then appointed Henry
Wallace as Secretary of Commerce, but Truman fired him when
he gave a speech urging conciliation with the Soviet Union. Some
scholars speculate that he may have been a Russian asset, a
scary thought since he was one heartbeat away from the
Presidency.

When? WEB Du Bois and Communism
Comintern II Congress, Petrograd, Russia, by Boris Kustodiev, 1921

When did WEB Du Bois start leaning towards
Communism? In his autobiography, WEB Du Bois
comments on his thoughts on communism
throughout his long life.
Even in high school, he mentions his oration on the
abolitionist Wendell Phillips, whom he said was
admired even though he was a socialist. Likewise, he
mentions that socialism and communism were not a
focus of his studies in his various colleges.

When his national profile was rising and the tensions
with Booker T Washington and the Tuskegee
Machine were increasing, he notes that while a
professor at Atlanta University that the teachings of
Marx and Engels were not stressed when studying
economics.
WEB Du Bois’ autobiography hints that he started
pondering socialism in the days of the Niagara
Movement.

One of the proclamations of
Niagara movement that
preceded the founding of the
NAACP was the insistence that
the “laws be enforced against
rich as well as poor; against
Capitalist as well as Laborer;
against white as well as black.”
Founders of Niagara Movement, 1905,
WEB Du Bois in middle row, white hat.

In the years before World War II, quite often
socialism was synonymous with communism,
although they became more distinct in the Spanish
Civil War when the moderate socialists battled with
and lost control of the Spanish Republican Party to
the communists under the direction of Stalin. Today
Socialism is not synonymous with communism, and
Christian Socialism is a major political movement in
Europe and has been for decades.

In the early years when he was the founding editor
of the Crisis, the magazine that promotes the
program of the NAACP, WEB Du Bois did not publish
articles about socialism and communism, instead
concentrating on racial issues such as lynchings, race
riots, and also self-improvement articles targeted to
their black audience.

WEB Du Bois’ editorial views on organized labor and
socialism were complicated. Although he supported
the cause of unions in principle, in practice many
unions would not allow blacks to join. Likewise, the
socialists emphasized class struggle, not the struggle
between races.

In a 1919 editorial in the Crisis, WEB Du
Bois proclaimed, “We do not believe in
revolution. We expect revolutionary
changes to come mainly through reason,
human sympathy, and the education of
children, and not by murder.” WEB Du
Bois saw the domination of black workers
by white workers as a greater threat to
blacks than the domination of workers by
capitalists.

Shortly before his resignation from the NAACP, he
dedicated an issue of the Crisis to “Negro Editors on
Communism.” Many editors contributed to this anthology,
some editors speculated that communism was a reaction
to the economic and racial consequences of the
Depression, others noted that, among the whites, only
Communists advocated the equality of Negroes. WEB Du
Bois noted that none of the editors called for abolishing
the market economy or for studying classical Marxism.

Scottsboro Boys Trial, CPUSA vs NAACP

The Scottsboro Boys Trial was the George Floyd event early in the century, this
pitted the Communist Party against the NAACP. The NAACP was the leading civil
rights organization, but the upstart CPUSA, the Communist Party of America,
wanted to champion the cause of blacks to further the cause of communism. There
were tensions and name calling during the Scottsboro Trials incident.
What happened? In Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1931 there was a rumble on a
freight train between some black hoboes and white hoboes, and the whites were
thrown off the train. The whites complained to the sheriff about being attacked by
a “bunch of niggers.” Southern justice prevailed, but when the sheriff in the next
town arrested nine Negro boys, from age thirteen to nineteen, they were surprised
that there were two white prostitutes accompanying them! They claimed they had
been raped by the black boys, likely to keep themselves out of trouble for
consorting with blacks. Four days later, jury trials sentence all but one of the boys to
death. The governor dispatched National Guard troops to prevent a lynching.

The Scottsboro Boys, with
attorney Samuel Leibowitz,
under guard by the state
militia, 1932
Victoria Price and Ruby
Bates, women in boxcar

When they learned of the convictions, the NAACP
was reluctant to take the case, their lawyers
preferred defendants with squeaky clean
reputations, and black hoboes traveling with white
prostitutes were anything but clean. But the CPUSA
lawyers offered to represent the black youths in their
appeals, the Communists saw a possible public
relations victory in the publicity.

Scottsboro
Boys, by
Hideo Noda,
1900's

(REPEAT) WEB Du Bois commented in the Crisis that a train ride
with two prostitutes was “no crime, except in the slave belt. The
unwritten penalty for that sort of social equality in Alabama is
death.”
Walter White of the NAACP met with the prisoners, offering to
replace their attorneys with the NAACP attorneys. He was
denounced by their parents, many blacks preferred the
aggressive, public tactics of the Communists. There were also
harsh words traded by the NAACP and the CPUSA. Eventually,
attorneys from both the NAACP and the CPUSA cooperated
somewhat in the appeals.

WEB Du Bois and staff in Crisis Magazine Office
WEB Du Bois commented in the Crisis that a train
ride with two prostitutes was “no crime, except
in the slave belt. The unwritten penalty for that
sort of social equality in Alabama is death.”

WEB Du Bois and staff in Crisis Magazine Office

The appeals and retrials surrounding the Scottsboro boys
spanned decades, with the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on the
case, and the US Supreme Court ruling on the cases twice. The
US Supreme Court overturned the verdicts stating that due
process required that blacks be included in the jury pool, which
threw the Southerners for a loop, since obviously blacks could
not be allowed to vote, and jurors were drawn from the voting
rolls. The eventual fate of the defendants varied, some died in
prison, others were released many decades later, some were
rearrested on other crimes.

Scottsboro Boys, by Britton and Patterson, 1936

WEB Du Bois and Pan-African Movement
Pan-African Congress, 1923, and Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana, leader of Pan-African movement.

The NAACP tolerated WEB Du Bois’ participation in the Pan-African
movement, which seeks to strengthen the bonds between Africans in
Africa and other countries. The movement also sought to end colonialism
and encourage the integration of newly independent former colonies
into the world economy and culture. The NAACP did not want to be
distracted from its legal struggles to combat discrimination and
segregation.
In his autobiography, WEB Du Bois said he did not view communism was
useful to assist blacks in America in fighting racism, he saw communism
in the light of the Pan African movement that sought to end colonial rule
in Africa. He had called Pan African Congresses in 1919, 1921, and 1923,
but he found limited support among American blacks, and no support
from his fellow leaders of the NAACP.

Pan African
Congress in
Paris, 1919,
WEB Du Bois is
number 4 in
front row.

WEB Du Bois’ attitudes about communism were influenced by his views
on colonialism, and we must remember he was an old man before the
colonial empires disintegrated after the end of World War II. WEB Du
Bois proclaimed, “the British Empire had built its prosperity on cheap
labor, which the colored peoples of the world were forced to do, and on
lands and materials which had been seized without just compensation by
the British throughout the world.”
The lessons this past century are that the lives of ordinary third-world
peoples did not automatically improve once the colonial overlords
departed; they were often replaced by native overlords, and the lower
classes of the third-world countries, including countries like India,
Bangladesh, and Pakistan, remain desperately impoverished.

Robert Clive and Mir
Jafar after the Battle of
Plassey, by Francis
Hayman, 1760
Robert Clive's victory
at the Battle of Plassey
established the British
East India Company as
a military as well as a
commercial power.

WEB Du Bois
proclaimed, “the
British Empire had
built its prosperity on
cheap labor, which
the colored peoples of
the world were forced
to do, and on lands
and materials which
had been seized
without just
compensation by the
British throughout the
world.”
The Slave Trade, by Auguste François Biard, 1840

The Slave Trade,
by Auguste
François Biard,
1840

When WEB Du Bois observed the Versailles Peace Conference as a special
representative of the NAACP, he ceaselessly lobbied for a Pan-African
Conference, which was called in Paris but did not accomplish much,
other than three days of speeches, even though one of Wilson’s Fourteen
Points encouraged the end of colonialism. The conference resolutions
were presented to the peace conference for action, but they were mostly
ignored. Soon after its 1920 Conference, the NAACP approved to
underwrite some of the expenses of a Pan-African Congress, but made it
clear that this would end the NAACP involvement in the movement, as it
was fighting lynching and other civil rights battles in America.

Treaty of Versailles : German delegate Johannes Bell signing the treaty in the Hall of
Mirrors, with various Allied delegations sitting and standing in front of him
The Germans were shocked by the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty, restrictions were
placed on German industry and military, German colonies were distributed among the Allies,
Germany had to pay heavy reparations, and were forced to accept a humiliating war guilt clause.

Pan African
Congress in
Lisbon, 1923,
WEB Du Bois
third in front row.

WEB Du Bois visited Soviet Russia in 1926, and he
witnessed genuine enthusiasm, with packed art
galleries and theaters, schools opening, and
enthusiastic workers. These were the heady days of
Lenin; the dark days of the Stalin purges would come
later.

Women, Go into Cooperatives, 1918
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1918

Foreign Affairs Magazine, WEB Du Bois
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/web-du-bois-doctrine-race-america-century

The influential magazine, Foreign Affairs, in its recent October 2022
Centennial issue, commented on how the half dozen articles WEB Du Bois
contributed to the discussion regarding colonialism and race in the
interwar years. His were minority views at during the interwar years, but
after the end of World War II, many colonies demanded independence
from their European masters.
His observation that colonialism was based on racial attitudes of
European superiority over African blacks and Asians rang true; after all,
Rudyard Kipling did speak about the “white man’s burden” in colonizing
the globe. Some of his views were naïve, such as the hope that “the rising
powers of Asia, as well as the Soviet Union, would upend the global
system of white supremacy and liberate Black Americans.”

Editorial cartoon, 'The
White Man's Burden',
by Victor Gillam, Judge
magazine, 1899, shows
John Bull and Uncle
Sam delivering the
world's people of color
to civilization. Uncle
Sam is carrying Cuba,
Hawaii, Samoa, 'Porto
Rico', and the
Philippines, while John
Bull is carrying Zulu,
China, and India.

Editorial cartoon, 'The
White Man's Burden',
by Victor Gillam, Judge
magazine, 1899, shows
John Bull and Uncle
Sam delivering the
world's people of color
to civilization. Uncle
Sam is carrying Cuba,
Hawaii, Samoa, 'Porto
Rico', and the
Philippines, while John
Bull is carrying Zulu,
China, and India.
Some of WEB Du Bois’ views were naïve,
such as the hope that “the rising powers
of Asia, as well as the Soviet Union, would
upend the global system of white
supremacy and liberate Black Americans.”

In a 1933 essay on Liberia, he
commented on “an unholy alliance
between the Firestone corporation, the
League of Nations, and the US
government. Despite a league-
sponsored investigation that found that
Firestone, in connivance with Liberian
elites, had used forced labor, the
United States sided with the company
against the league’s plan for reform.
The result was Liberia’s indebtedness
and loss of sovereignty.” WEB Du Bois
asked, “Are we using the United States
Army to guarantee Firestone’s profits?” African Americans depart for Liberia, 1896. The ACS
sent its last emigrants to Liberia in 1904.

Many similar questions were asked during
the Sixties and after, “Du Bois foresaw the
problems of commingling US military
power with private interests and the ease
with which major powers could employ
international organizations to hide their
imperialist agendas under a veneer of
legitimacy,” foreshadowing how, long
after colonialism had ended, “global
superpowers would use debt to guarantee
the subservience of counties and Africa
and elsewhere in the developing world.”
Harvesting Rubber Tree on Plantation

The Foreign Affairs article discusses his flirtation
with communism. “Du Bois’ admiration for
authoritarians such as Nkrumah and Mao, and
his fulsome praise for the Soviet tyrant Joseph
Stalin, were inconsistent with his lifelong
support for democracy.” But he felt that
although “democracy was incompatible with
racial and economic inequality,” the United
States of his day did oppose racial
discrimination and inequality, causing him to
lose faith in American democracy. “Du Bois
argued that the domestic could never be
divorced from the global, and that Washington’s
quest for a liberal order could never be
reconciled with a Jim Crow system at home.”

After NAACP, Return to Atlanta University

After his time at the NAACP, WEB Du Bois returned to Atlanta University
in 1934 to chair the Department of Sociology. It wasn’t a total break,
because even after his resignation, he contributed many leading articles
to the Crisis magazine. One of the courses he taught studied communism,
although he had not yet formally joined the communist party. His course
included a review of the Communist Manifesto and other socialist and
communist works.
While at Atlanta University, he assembled the most comprehensive
collection of works on socialism and communism in the South. WEB Du
Bois sought to assimilate Marx’s writings, so he could explain and adapt
this ideology to black America. Marx’s study of economic systems and his
anticlericalism appealed to WEB Du Bois, who was never drawn to the
vibrant evangelism of the black churches.

Another reason why his was a friendly departure from the NAACP is
many black leaders were encouraging him in his next project, a major
history on the Reconstruction Era, his famous Black Reconstruction in
America. WEB Dubois argued that blacks played a major role in winning
the Civil War by escaping from slavery to the Union lines and joining the
Union Army in large numbers. He also argued that true democracy
flourished in the Reconstruction Era with the enfranchisement of blacks
and their active participation in civic life.
This work also challenges the Lost Cause myth that the Civil War was not
fought over slavery, but over states’ rights, and that the Southern cause
was a noble cause.

This history challenged the Dunning School of historical
interpretation that pictured the Reconstruction Era as a dark
time in American History, where Northern carpetbaggers,
colluding with evil Southern scalawags, took advantage of both
the defeated South and the formerly happy slaves who were
now freedmen. Although it earned high marks in many book
reviews when it was released, it was ignored by many white
historians until the 1960’s Civil Rights Era.
Many criticized the book for its discussion of the black
proletariat and white proletariat, terminology borrowed from
communism.

WEB Du Bois wrote an article for the Crisis magazine on
“Marxism and the Negro Problem,” then a few months later,
“Karl Marx and the Negro.” He had an antipathy for the market
economy of capitalism but denied that his beloved Talented
Tenth was comparable to a conquering bourgeoisie, as long as
they continued to strive to improve the lot of the black masses.
In his system, the black workers and white workers were “two
proletariats who were separate, unequal, and antagonistic, a
reality only partially due to the divide-and-conquer strategies of
the capitalists.”

W. E. B. Du Bois in the office of The Crisis

W. E. B. Du Bois in the office of The Crisis
In WEB Dubois’ system,
the black workers and
white workers were “two
proletariats who were
separate, unequal, and
antagonistic, a reality only
partially due to the divide-
and-conquer strategies of
the capitalists.”

WEB Du Bois stated that “colored
labor has no common ground
with white labor,” “white labor
that deprives the Negro of his
right to vote, denies his
education, denies him affiliation
with trade unions, expels him
from decent houses and
neighborhoods, and heaps upon
him the public insults of open
color discrimination.”

The unpleasant Scottsboro trial made his disdain the American
Communist Party, and he continued to dismiss communism as a
political solution for Negroes in America. WEB Du Bois thought
that Russian communism was not an acceptable solution to the
crisis of capitalism since they “consolidated their power by
assassination and mass propaganda of every sort.”
Unfortunately, John Hope, his friend and President of the
College, passed away in 1936, and although he was hired well
past the customary retirement age, the board later decided that
he should indeed retire. After some negotiation they agree to
pay him both a severance payment and a pension.

International Red
Aid propaganda
poster "Wrest eight
innocent young
negroes out of the
hands of the
American
bourgeoisie!"
American
policeman in front
of the Nazi
swastika with
baton raised
against food
rioters.

After Forced Retirement, Return to NAACP
Moorfield Storey, Mary White
Ovington and W. E. B. Du Bois

His biographer Lewis states that “in the ten years since Du Bois’
resignation, the NAACP had grown into a national powerhouse, with
325,000 members in 893 branches and still expanding by the month. The
income had quadrupled; the staff had tripled.” “Walter White now
commanded the NAACP with a military efficiency,” with contrarians
barely tolerated.
Litigation to roll back segregation was now a major part of the NAACP’s
mission. Heading up the Legal Defense and Educational Fund was the civil
rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall, future Supreme Court Justice. The
rehiring of WEB Du Bois was a public relations coup for Walter White, but
NAACP leadership were mistaken in their belief that the old lion would
enjoy “a well-salaried repose in his declining years.”

Justices of Supreme Court, 1976. Thurgood Marshall, bottom row, far right.

WEB Du Bois had struggled to organize Pan-African Conferences after
World War I, but the politics favored the abolition of colonial empires
after end of World War II. Eleanor Roosevelt had three delegates from
the NAACP appointed to the US Delegation to meetings founding the
United Nations. Although this was good public relations for America, the
NAACP was like a gnat moving among elephants, it was unable to
influence the proceedings in any substantial manner.
Soon afterwards, WEB Du Bois attended a Pan-African Conference in
England where the African delegates were a majority of the participants
for the first time, and he was invited to chair the session as the president
of the conference. Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana and an icon of
Pan-Africanism, demanded that the victorious democracies dismantle
imperialism, one of the causes of the last world war.

Harry Truman
addressing the
United Nations
Conference in
San Francisco,
1945.

Kwame
Nkrumah, back
row, 1960
Commonwealth
Prime Minister's
Conference

Meanwhile, the Legal Defense Fund under Thurgood Marshall
was steadily dismantling the separate but equal precedent set by
Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, which would culminate in the 1954
decision of Brown v Board of Education, compelling
desegregation of public schools with “all deliberate speed,” a
legal battle we discussed in a video on the Second Founding.
But there was friction between the controlling Walter White and
the contrarian WEB Du Bois. The spacious offices he was
promised never materialized, in the four years he spent in his
second stint at the NAACP, his offices were cramped. This led to a
second friendly resignation after a few years.

Thurgood
Marshall is
on the right.

Nina Passes, Remarries Shirley Graham
WEB Du Bois with his wife Nina and daughter Yolande, 1901. Shirley Graham Du Bois

WEB Du Bois had many intense affairs during his life
with adoring young intellectual black women.

His biographer, who read many personal
letters, said that all his lovers and
confidants knew that “Nina would remain
the official and everlasting Mrs. Du Bois
until death released him. She had become
practically invisible by the late twenties, a
frail, gray creature, always well attired, in
uninterestingly so, to be escorted to
benefits and annual NAACP balls.” It can be
deduced from the correspondence that
“Will had come to regard Nina as both a
burden and a shield, much as his crippled,
undereducated mother had been.”

Not only was his wife Nina aware of his dalliances, on
occasion she played hostess to some of his lovers.
She passed away in July 1950, when WEB Du Bois
was 83, shortly before he resigned from the NAACP.

WEB Du Bois remembers that “I
married again near the end of my
days. She was a woman forty years
my junior but her work and aim in
life had been close to mine because
her father had long believed in what
I was trying to do. The faith of
Shirley Graham in me was therefore
inherited and received as a joy and
not merely as a duty. She has made
these days rich and rewarding.”
WEB Du Bois, Laura Wheeler Waring

He had first met Shirley when she was a teen when he was her family’s
guest. She later attended college, was married and had two children
before her divorce. Then she went back to college and later met WEB Du
Bois, she was of many adoring young intellectuals in his circle. Her letters
say they first slept together in 1936, when she was 29 and he was 69.
WEB Du Bois said Shirley persuaded him to marry at age 85 so he would
have companionship during a difficult time in his life.
Shirley was a writer, composer, and civil rights activist who had a national
reputation before her friendship with WEB Du Bois, she had been a card-
carrying Communist since the 1940’s. Did she influence WEB Du Bois in
his turn towards communism? Or was WEB Du Bois attracted to her
because of her communism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Graham_Du_Bois

Shirley Graham Du Bois led an interesting life after
the death of her husband. She was forced to leave
Ghana after a coup, she lived in Egypt and learned
Arabic, promoting Afrocentrism, then moved to
China during the Cultural Revolution, gave lectures at
Yale University, and passed away in Beijing in 1977,
where she was given a state funeral attended by
many important Communist leaders. She was red to
the very end.

After death of her husband:
• Lived in Ghana until hostile coup.
• Lived in Egypt and learned Arabic,
promoting Afrocentrism.
• Lived in China during Cultural Revolution.
• Gave lectures at Yale University.
• Passed away in Beijing in 1977.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Graham_Du_Bois

Passport & Legal Problems, Exile in Ghana

Much of the closing chapters of his autobiography covers his legal problems
dragging out for several years. In the years leading up to the McCarthy hearings, The
State Department accused WEB Du Bois as acting as an agent of a foreign
government due to his contacts with Soviet officials at various Pan-African events
and his very public affirmations of support for communism. When a trial was
eventually convened, the judge dismissed the charges. During this time, the NAACP
forbid its branches from hosting our contrarian activist at any of their meetings.
The State Department refused to validate his passport until the Supreme Court
ruled that this practice was unconstitutional. When WEB Du Bois was given back his
passport, he and his wife Shirley traveled to first to Moscow, where he was a guest
of honor, meeting and chatting with Nikita Khrushchev. They then travelled to
Beijing, where they were again a guest of honor, meeting Premier Chou En-lai.

Mao Zedong and Henry Kissinger, Choi En-Lai looking on.

These communist leaders enjoyed hosting this famous
American civil rights activist, was WEB Du Bois flattered by
the attention? We can assume so, but then black men
forced to live under Jim Crow always enjoyed traveling to
distant countries that welcomed them.

(REPEAT) WEB Du Bois wrote this around this time about the Negro: “In
America he was a nigger; in Britain he was tolerated; in France he was
cheered; in the Soviet Union he was loved for the great artist that he is.”
Was WEB Du Bois unaware of the atrocities of Stalin and Mao? If he was
aware, how could he justify these atrocities? Certainly, he was aware of
these atrocities, though, like many liberals of his age, he was likely
reluctant to believe the worst of the atrocities.
(REPEAT) His biographer Lewis suggests he explained away these atrocities
with an attitude of what-aboutism, “Du Bois adjusted the Russian casualty
tables in light of the Atlantic slave trade, the scramble for Africa, the
needless First World War, Nazi death camps, and the color-coded poverty
and wage-slavery raging within and beyond North America.”

WEB Du Bois wrote this about the Negro:
“In America he was a nigger; in Britain he
was tolerated; in France he was cheered;
in the Soviet Union he was loved for the
great artist that he is.”
His biographer Lewis suggests he
explained away these atrocities with an
attitude of what-aboutism, “Du Bois
adjusted the Russian casualty tables in
light of the Atlantic slave trade, the
scramble for Africa, the needless First
World War, Nazi death camps, and the
color-coded poverty and wage-slavery
raging within and beyond North America.” WEB Du Bois and his wife Shirley with members
from Algerian delegation.

WEB Du Bois was instead imagining what
Communism could be like in the dreamlands of
devout Communists, in the pages of Marx. In real life,
many people who emigrate to escape communism,
like by Russian coworker from Uzbekistan, describe it
as a social system specially designed to make the
lives of ordinary people miserable.

Mao Zedong and Stalin shortly before Stalin’s death.

DISCUSSION OF SOURCES:
We prefer reading the autobiographies of black civil rights leaders
because we want them to speak for themselves.
For the videos on the latter part of the life of WEB Du Bois, we used as
our primary source the excellent biography by David Levering Lewis. This
biography was key to understanding the history of the NAACP, WEB Du
Bois’ flirtation with communism, his personal life, and his latter years.
And we quoted from the Foreign Affairs Centennial edition article on
WEB Du Bois.
There is an excellent article, When WEB Du Bois Was Unamerican,
covering this same time period in the Boston Review.

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/when-civil-rights-were-un-american/

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Was WEB Du Bois a Communist? The Later Years of NAACP Co-Founder and Civil Rights Activist

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Was WEB Du Bois a Communist? The Later Years of NAACP Co-Founder and Civil Rights Activist