William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963) was a renowned and distinguished authority on African-American history in the United States and Africa. An outspoken and eloquent civil rights activist, he fought with his mighty pen against human injustice. He focused primarily on African-American issues, but also supported women’s rights and suffrage.

DuBois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. During his youth, he worked part-time as a newspaper reporter. He graduated from high school in 1884 as valedictorian of his class. By age 15, DuBois was a local correspondent for THE NEW YORK GLOBE.

The young DuBois earned a B.A. from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1888. During the summers, he tutored African-American students in the Nashville area. DuBois was awarded a second B.A. (1890) from Harvard University. In subsequent years, he continued graduate studies in history and economics at the University of Berlin.

He taught Latin and Greek for two years at Wilberforce University in Ohio, the oldest African-American university in the U.S. He received an M.A. (1891) and Ph.D. (1895) in history from Harvard. His doctoral dissertation, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of American, 1638-1870,” was first in Harvard’s Historical Series.

He also taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1896-1897 and published PHILADELPHIA NEGRO: A SOCIAL STUDY (1897), before serving as an economics professor at Atlanta University from 1897-1910.

DuBois married Nina Gomer in 1896. They had two children.

In 1905, DuBois founded the Niagara Movement, an African-American protest collection of scholars and professionals, calling for a closure to race discrimination. He started and edited Niagara publications, includeing MOON (1906) and THE HORIZON (1907-1910).

By 1909, he helped to establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). DuBois edited the NAACP publication, THE CRISIS, from 1909 to 1934.

DuBois was a member of the Socialist Party for several years.

In the 1940s, DuBois acted as a consultant on African-American affairs to the United Nations. He penned “An Appeal to the World” in 1947.

DuBois participated in the New York, Paris, and Moscow peace talks in 1949. The following year, he ran for a New York seat in the U.S. Senate for the American Labor Party. He lost. Soon afterwards, the U.S. government arrested him as an agent of a foreign country, but he was acquitted.

By the mid-1950s, discouraged by Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunts (DuBois was under suspicion for his Communist sympathies), DuBois decided to leave the county. In 1961, after joining the Communist Party in the U.S., he relocated to Ghana, where he settled as an expatriate. In Africa, he served as editor-in-chief of ENCYCLOPEDIA AFRICANA. (Previously, the publication has been run by Kwame Hkrumah, the former president of Ghana.)

He struggled to foster spiritual unity among tribal peoples and to rejuvenate African Communism.

Dubois published more than 100 articles and essays and wrote more than twenty books, including THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE (1896), THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO (1899), THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK (1903), JOHN BROWN (1909), QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEEC, a novel (1911), THE NEGRO (1915), DARKWATER: VOICES FROM THE VEIL, a collection of poetry and essays (1920), THE GIFT OF BLACK FOLK (1924), DARK PRINCESS, novel (1928), BLACK FOLK: THEN & NOW (1939), DUSK OF DAWN (1940), COLOR & DEMOCRACY (1945), THE WORLD & AFRICA (1947), IN BATTLE FOR PEACE (1952), AND BLACK FLAME (1961).

Dubois received many honors, including membership in the National Institute of Arts & Letters and a fellowship and life membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

DuBois died on August 27, 1963, in Ghana, the night before the famous civil rights March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom in Washington, DC. He was 95 years old.

SOURCES:
http://www.africawithin.com/bios/web_dubois.htm
http://www.africawithin.com/dubois/dubois_bio.htm
http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html
http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/dubois_w.htm
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/harmon/duboharm.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/dubois.html