W.E.B. Du Bois Life

1. W.E.B. Du Bois
Phylis J. Iqbal

2. Du Bois’ Early Life & Education
 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on
February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts.
 He grew up in a European American town and
identified himself as "mulatto," and attended school
with white students and was greatly supported by
his white teachers. He was the valedictorian for his
high school and first African American to graduate
from his school.
 In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee to attend
Fisk University where he experienced the Jim Crow
laws and racism for the first time.

3. Du Bois’ Education
 Du Bois taught in rural Tennessee
schools.
 He was later accepted into Harvard
University where he eventually became
the first African-American to graduate
with a PhD in 1895.
 Du Bois also studied abroad at the
University of Berlin.

4. Du Bois’ Life & Published Works
 Du Bois taught classics and modern
languages at Wilberforce University in
Ohio where he met a student at the
school, Nina Gomer, who he married in
1896 and had two children with.
 Du Bois published his first sociological
study on African American people, titled
The Philadelphia Negro in 1899.
 He began working at Atlanta University
and published many works and studies
during his time there including a
collection of essays titled The Souls of
Black Folk.

5. Du Bois’ Activism
 During this time, a black man named, Sam Hose, was lynched in Georgia after
being accused of murder and rape. His knuckles were put on display in a local
store. Du Bois began to question his scientific research methods and said, “Two
considerations thereafter broke in upon my work and eventually disrupted it:
first, one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were
lynched, murdered, and starved; and secondly, there was no such definite
demand for scientific work of the sort I was doing.”
 He went on to publish a work about the black community after slavery called
The Negro Landholder of Georgia and Some Notes on Negro Crime,
Particularly in Georgia in 1904.
 Du Bois found the Niagara Movement, an African American protest group in
1905. In 1909 Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and also served as a director of
publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of the
Crisis, its monthly magazine.

6. Du Bois Activism (conti.)
 Du Bois became a spokesperson for full and equal rights for all people and was especially vocal and
supportive of women’s rights.
 Du Bois publicly opposed Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise agreement which said
vocational education was more valuable for blacks than higher education, political office, etc. and
criticized Washington for not fighting for equality for African Americans based on the 14th
Amendment.

7. Du Bois in Ghana
 Du Bois resigned from the NAACP Board and from the Crisis in
1934 to focus on advocacy of African American controlled
institutions, schools, and economic cooperatives.
 Du Bois was concerned with pan-Africanism and conditions of
people of African descent wherever they lived and organized a
series of pan-African congresses around the world, in 1919, 1921,
1923, and 1927. He eventually took up residence in Ghana where
was working on an encyclopedia of the African Diaspora.
 He died at the age of 95 on August 27, 1963, a day before Martin
Luther King Jr’s. "I Have a Dream" speech.
 In his lifetime, Du Bois was a poet, playwright, novelist, essayist,
sociologist, historian, and journalist. He wrote 21 books, edited 15,
and published over 100 essays and articles.

8. Works Cited
 http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dubois/aa_dubois_growup_2.html
 http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00191.html
 http://www.biography.com/people/web-du-bois-9279924#pan-africanism-and-death
 http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/w-e-b-dubois-and-making-encyclopedia-africana-1909-
1963
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.E.B._Du_Bois_Boyhood_Homesite
 http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/w-e-b-du-bois-georgia
 http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/w-e-b-du-bois