W.E.B. Du Bois was a sociologist, author, editor, historian, Pan-Africanist, and civil rights activist. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the first African American earn a doctorate when he graduated from Harvard University. He became a history, sociology, and economics professor at Atlanta University. Du Bois was also one of the co-founders of the NAACP in 1909. Read more below.
Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. 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 and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.
Racism was the main target of Du Bois’s polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included colored persons everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in their struggles against colonialism and imperialism. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to free African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa, and Asia. After World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military.
