The Life of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Look at Du Bois’s Notable Works

W.E.B. Du Bois was a sociologist, civil rights activist, author, and cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was one of the leading voices for African American rights in the early twentieth century. His work continues to influence new generations of thought leaders, scholars, and civil rights activists.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s life encapsulates the post–Civil War era of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960s:

• Early life: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in the predominantly white community of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois lived with his mother, Mary, and experienced racism and prejudice throughout his childhood. Du Bois found solace in education and became the first member of his extended family to graduate from high school. When he decided to attend college, a local church, the First Congregational Church of Great Barrington, paid his tuition.
• Education: Du Bois attended Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1883. The experience introduced him to the full scope of racism in the American South, including Jim Crow laws, lynching, and voter suppression. His time at school awakened his interest in the study of racial inequality. After graduating from Fisk, Du Bois earned his second bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a scholarship to attend its sociology graduate school.
• Fellowship and teaching: He completed a fellowship at the University of Berlin in 1892 before returning to Harvard to finish his graduate studies. Three years later, Du Bois became the first Black American to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. Du Bois later taught at Wilberforce University in Ohio and the University of Pennsylvania.
• NAACP: While teaching at Georgia’s Atlanta University in 1910, Du Bois participated in the National Negro Congress, which led to the founding of the NAACP. He became the organization’s Director of Publicity and Research and the editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis. However, Du Bois’s support for socialism, the Communist Party, and the separate but equal segregation policies led to his resignation from the NAACP in 1934. He returned in 1944 to serve as its Director of Special Research but resigned again in 1948.
• Writings: Du Bois’s Harvard doctoral thesis, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, became his first published book in 1894. He followed it with sociological studies into the lives of Black Americans, culminating in his groundbreaking essay “The Strivings of the Negro People” for Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1897. His first major book, 1899’s The Philadelphia Negro, was a comprehensive look at Black American life in the Pennsylvania city, while 1903’s The Souls of Black Folk compiled his Atlantic essay with other writings on the challenges that the Black community faced in American society. Du Bois published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece, in 1911, while The Negro, his study of Black Africans, followed in 1915.
• Personal life: Du Bois married his first wife, Nina Gomer, in 1896. Three years later, their son, Burghardt, died of diptheria in 1899. Du Bois’s search for a Black doctor after white doctors refused to treat him informed his essay, “The Passing of the First Born.” Their daughter, Yolanda, was a teacher and a member of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural revival of Black American art, politics, music, and literature. Following Gomer’s death in 1950, Du Bois married Shirley Graham, an author and activist, in 1951.
• Death and legacy: Kwame Nkrumah, who later became the president of Ghana, invited Du Bois to participate in the African country’s independence in 1957. He relocated there in 1963 to work on Encyclopedia Africana, his long-standing project about the African diaspora. Du Bois’s health declined during his two-year stay in Africa, and he died in the Ghanaian capital of Accra on August 27, 1963. A year later, the passage of the Civil Rights Act would serve as his legacy by legalizing many of the rights he advocated in his lifetime.

W.E.B. Du Bois published numerous works of non-fiction and essays during his lifetime. Three of his most significant written efforts are as follows:

• The Souls of Black Folk: Published in 1903, this collection of essays outlines many of his major principles, including the idea of “double consciousness.” The collection also advocates for education and giving Black citizens the right to vote and details the importance of the church in Black American life. He also famously criticized fellow advocate Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise, under which Black Southerners would trade away their rights for educational and economic freedom under white rule.
• The Crisis: Du Bois became editor of The Crisis in 1910. Under his direction, it became a leading voice for activism, supporting civil rights, women’s rights and suffrage, unionized labor, and the Harlem Renaissance. Du Bois, who penned numerous articles for the magazine, used The Crisis to highlight racial prejudice in many forms, from lynching to the offensive stereotypes in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.
• Black Reconstruction in America: This 1935 tome offered a counterpoint to prevailing academic interpretations of the post–Civil War period. The book specifically focused on the Dunning School, a school of thought which claimed that Reconstruction was a failure and diminished the role of Black Americans in rebuilding the South. Du Bois argued that any failure was not due to the Black and white working classes, but rather Southern landowners, who elected officials to enact Jim Crow laws and other restrictive legislation.

There are several important principles associated with W.E.B. Du Bois, including:

1. 1. Color line: Though Du Bois did not originate the term “color line,” he helped define it in his book The Philadelphia Negro. Du Bois described the color line as the unspoken barrier between white and Black Americans, which prevented the latter from living with the same degree of rights as the former. Du Bois would later describe the color line as “the problem of the twentieth century” in The Souls of Black Folk.
2. 2. Double consciousness: Du Bois introduced the idea of double consciousness or “two-ness” in The Souls of Black Folk. The concept stated that Black Americans viewed themselves from two perspectives: their own and that of white people, who often saw them with “contempt or pity.” A twenty-first-century revision, “triple consciousness,” adds an outside perspective based on gender or nationality.
3. 3. Talented Tenth: According to Du Bois, the “Talented Tenth” was the percentage of Black men—one in ten—who became Black community leaders through education and social activism. Du Bois used the Talented Tenth to promote expanded access to academics, especially literature and the humanities, for Black men.

W.E.B. Du Bois had connections to several political and social movements. Among them are:

1. 1. Pan-Africanism: Du Bois supported the Pan-African movement, which sought to support and strengthen connections between all African ethnic groups involved in the diaspora. He helped formulate resolutions for racial equality at the second Pan-African Congress in 1921 and initially supported activist Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement, which advocated Black Americans’ return to Africa. The two later split over issues of racial integration, and Du Bois wrote several critical articles about Garvey in The Crisis.
2. 2. Socialism: Du Bois had a complicated relationship with the Socialist Party during the early twentieth century. He became a member in 1911, but his support of presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson over a Socialist candidate led to his ouster. (He would later pen a letter to the future president denouncing his racial policies and urging him to confront global racism.) He continued to believe that socialism was a viable alternative to capitalism but remained loyal to Republican and Democratic political candidates instead of socialists. In 1950, Du Bois ran for senator of New York as part of the Socialist-affiliated American Labor Party.
3. 3. Communism: Though Du Bois supported Marxism, he did not fully advocate the Communist Party of the Soviet Union because of its totalitarian leanings and denounced its efforts to appeal to African Americans in the 1930s. Still, his connection to the party led to friction with the NAACP. He would later resign from the organization during the early years of the Cold War. In later years, he would advocate the principles of communism while remaining distant from its leaders in Russia.
4. 4. Niagara movement: Du Bois was a leading figure in the Niagara Movement, a civil rights movement organized in opposition to Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise. The Niagara Movement advocated equal treatment for all Americans, especially regarding economic opportunity, and called for voters to reject candidates who supported Jim Crow laws. Du Bois founded two periodicals—Moon Illustrated Weekly and The Horizon—to promote the movement’s principles, but failed to rally support, leading to the end of the Niagara Movement in 1910.

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