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W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois, the first Black person to earn a PhD from Harvard, used his talent and intellect to pave a path toward racial uplift.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a scholar, public intellectual, author, orator, and activist who used his powerful voice and influence to illuminate issues of race, racism, and Black consciousness. He is also one of Harvard’s best-known graduates. Co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and editor of its magazine, the Crisis, Du Bois authored dozens of books examining the Black experience in the United States, including his seminal collection of sociological essays, Souls of Black Folk.

Du Bois taught at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), was active in the Pan-Africanism movement, and used various platforms to challenge Jim Crow segregation and racial oppression. He also engaged in fierce debates with prominent contemporaries like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington on the best way to achieve racial equity and empowerment.

An Extraordinary Experience

Born three years after the end of the Civil War, Du Bois grew up in predominately white Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a small, rural town with an even smaller Black population. His childhood in Great Barrington was a central influence in his life, as was his mother, Mary, who cultivated a young Du Bois’s understanding of what it meant to be Black in America.

Du Bois (seated left) earned an undergraduate degree in 1888 at the historically black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Harvard, unwilling to accept his Fisk credential, required Du Bois to complete a second bachelor’s degree. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries

W. E. B. Du Bois, a towering American intellectual and a tireless advocate for Black equality, was the first African American to earn a PhD at Harvard University. He went on to c

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    • W. E. B. Du Bois

    American sociologist and activist (1868–1963)

    For other people with similar names, see William DuBois.

    William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (doo-BOYSS; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.

    Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Harvard University, where he was its first African American to earn a doctorate, Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists seeking equal rights. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the talented tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift, and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.

    Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois used his position in the NAACP to respond to racist incidents. After the First World War, he attended the Pan-African Congresses, embraced socialism and became a professor at Atlanta University. Once the Second World War had ended, he engaged in peace activism and was targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.

    Du Bois was a prolific author. Du Bois primarily targeted racism with his writing, which protested strongly against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and racial discrimination in important social institutions. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was

    W.E.B. Du Bois

    On the 27th August, 1963, the day before Martin Luther King electrified the world from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the immortal words, 'I Have a Dream', the life of another giant of the Civil Rights movement quietly drew to a close in Accra, Ghana: W.E.B. DuBois. In this new biography, Bill V. Mullen interprets the seismic political developments of the Twentieth Century through Du Bois's revolutionary life.

    Du Bois was born in Massachusetts in 1868, just three years after formal emancipation of America's slaves. In his extraordinarily long and active political life, he would emerge as the first black man to earn a PhD from Harvard; surpass Booker T. Washington as the leading advocate for African American rights; co-found the NAACP, and involve himself in anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles across Asia and Africa. Beyond his Civil Rights work, Mullen also examines Du Bois's attitudes towards socialism, the USSR, China's Communist Revolution, and the intersectional relationship between capitalism, poverty and racism.

    An accessible introduction to a towering figure of American Civil Rights, perfect for anyone wanting to engage with Du Bois's life and work.

    Bill V. Mullen is Professor of American Studies at Purdue University. He is the author of James Baldwin: Living in Fire and UnAmerican: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution, amongst other books.

    'This is Marxist biography at its finest. W.E.B. Du Bois is the rare scholarly book that evokes the feeling that our own moment of radical challenge reverberates with the trials of another century, but Mullen proposes an internationalist perspective that re-enchants the story of this activist-intellectual with immediacy' - Alan Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor (Emeritus), University of Michigan, author of the American Literary Left Trilogy (UNC Press)'Bill Mullen's illuminating biography is essential for understanding the political, personal, and

  • W. e. b. du bois died

    • W.E.B. Du Bois

    (1868-1963)

    Who Was W.E.B. Du Bois?

    Scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. He wrote extensively and was the best-known spokesperson for African American rights during the first half of the 20th century. Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

    Early Life and Education

    William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

    While growing up in a mostly white American town, Du Bois identified himself as mulatto, but freely attended school with white people and was enthusiastically supported in his academic studies by his white teachers.

    In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the deep troubles of American racism.

    After earning his bachelor's degree at Fisk, Du Bois entered Harvard University. He paid his way with money from summer jobs, scholarships and loans from friends. After completing his master's degree, he was selected for a study-abroad program at the University of Berlin.

    While a pupil in Germany, he studied with some of the most prominent social scientists of his day and was exposed to political perspectives that he touted for the remainder of his life.

    Harvard Ph.D.

    Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895.

    He went on to enroll as a doctoral student at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität). He would be awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Humboldt decades later, in 1958.

    Writing and Activism

    Du Bois published his landmark study — the first case study of an African American community — The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), marking the beginning of his expansive writing career.

    In the study, he coined the