DU BOIS, WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT

W. E. B. Du Bois was an African American intel-
lectual, sociologist, poet, and activist whose
fierce commitment to racial equality was the
seminal force behind important sociopolitical
reforms in the twentieth-century United States.
Although Du Bois may not have the same
name recognition as FREDERICK DOUGLASS or
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. , he is regarded by
most historians as an influential leader. King
himself praised Du Bois as an intellectual giant
whose “singular greatness lay in his quest for
truth about his own people.” Reflecting on Du
Bois’s legacy, playwright Lorraine Hansberry
noted that “his ideas have influenced a multi-
tude who do not even know his name.”
Born February 23, 1868, in Great Barring-
ton, Massachusetts, during the Reconstruction
period following the U.S. CIVIL WAR,Du Bois
was of African, French, and Dutch descent. His
tremendous potential was apparent to his fellow
townspeople, who raised money in the local
churches to send him to Tennessee’s Fisk Uni-
versity, a predominantly African American
school. Du Bois earned a bachelor of arts degree
from Fisk in 1888. He then attended Harvard
University, where his professors included
George Santayana and WILLIAM JAMES. An out-
standing student, Du Bois received three degrees
from Harvard: a bachelor’s in 1890, a master’s in
1891, and a doctor’s in 1895.
Du Bois traveled extensively in Europe dur-
ing the early 1890s and did postdoctoral work at
the University of Berlin, in Germany. It was
there that he pledged his life and career to the
social and political advancement of African
Americans. When Du Bois returned to the
United States, he accepted his first teaching posi-
tion at Ohio’s Wilberforce University. He later
taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at
Atlanta University.
Du Bois made his mark as an accomplished
sociologist and historian, publishing ground-
breaking studies on African American culture. In
The Philadelphia Negro (1899), he interviewed
5,000 people to document the social institutions,
health, crime patterns, family relationships, and
education of African Americans in northern
urban areas. In his 1903 book The Souls of Black
34 DRUNKARD
WEST’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 2nd EditionFolk, he published a beautifully written collec-
tion of essays on the political history and cultural
conditions of African Americans.
Although his success in academe was well
recognized, Du Bois chose to cut a bolder swath
as a passionate social activist. He became a sym-
bol of principled social protest on behalf of
African Americans. Du Bois combined his
scholarly endeavors with the profound outrage
he felt over racial injustice and the South’s dis-
criminatory JIM CROW LAWS. He used his posi-
tion as a respected intellectual to decry the
unequal treatment of African Americans and to
push for fundamental change. According to
King, Du Bois knew it was not enough to be
angry. The task was to organize people so that
the anger became a transforming power. As a
result, King said, “It was never possible to know
where the scholar Du Bois ended and the organ-
izer Du Bois began. The two qualities in him
were a single unified force.”
Du Bois was a contemporary of BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON, the head of Alabama’s famed
Tuskegee Institute and the undisputed leader of
the African American community at the turn of
the twentieth century. A former slave,Washing-
ton was a powerful figure who favored the grad-
ual acquisition of CIVIL RIGHTS for African
Americans. He believed that the best route for
African Americans was agricultural or industrial
education, not college. Although Du Bois agreed
with some of Washington’s ideas, he eventually
lost patience with the slow pace and agenda of
Washington’s program.
To Du Bois,Washington’s Tuskegee Machine
was much too accommodating to the white
power structure. Du Bois favored a more mili-
tant approach to achieving full social and polit-
ical justice for African Americans. Because of Du
Bois’s talent as a writer, he became an effective
spokesperson for the opponents ofWashington’s
gradualism. He became the unambiguous voice
of indignation and activism for African Ameri-
cans. Du Bois insisted on the immediate rights
of all people of color to vote; to obtain a decent
education, including college; and to enjoy basic
civil liberties.
His beliefs led to the creation of the Niagara
movement in 1905. This organization was
formed by like-minded African Americans to
protest Washington’s compromising approach
to the so-called Negro problem. Du Bois
preached power through achievement, self-suffi-
ciency, racial solidarity, and cultural pride. He
came up with a plan called the Talented Tenth,