Du Bois, W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt)

Du Bois, W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt] (1868–1963),after graduation from Fisk (1888) and a Ph.D. from Harvard (1895) became a professor of economics and history at Atlanta University (1897–1910) and a dynamic leader of social reform activities on behalf of his fellow blacks. He opposed the views of Booker T. Washington as too conservative and limited, organized young black intellectuals in a Niagara Movement, helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), which he later disavowed (1948) as too conservative, and was an editor of the magazine Crisis (1910–34). Meanwhile he wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Darkwater (1920), essays, sketches, and verses about the life of blacks in the U.S. His significant historical and sociological studies dealing with black people in Africa and the U.S. and over a long period of time include The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the U.S.A. (1896), his doctoral thesis; The Philadelphia Negro (1899); John Brown (1909); The Negro (1915); The Gift of Black Folk (1924); Black Reconstruction (1935); and Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945), a tract against imperialism and for the independence of small nations. Dusk of Dawn (1940) he described as “not so much my autobiography as the autobiography of a concept of race.” He also wrote novels: The Dark Princess (1928), and The Black Flame: A Trilogy, which incorporates The Ordeal of Mansart (1957), Mansart Builds a School (1959), and Worlds of Color (1961). In 1958 he was awarded the Lenin International Peace Prize and in 1961 he joined the Communist party. The year before his death he moved to Ghana and became a citizen of that nation. His Correspondence was published in 3 volumes (1979).