WEB Du Bois, American sociologist, author, activist, and co-founder of the NAACP, died on this day in history, August 27, 1963, in Accra, Ghana, at the age of 95.
“He was an activist who was the most important black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century,” Britannica.com noted.
The civil rights pioneer, born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was the son of Mary Silvina Burghardt, a domestic worker, and Alfred Du Bois, a barber and laborer, according to the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
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Du Bois was descended from mixed-race Bahamian slaves. His father enlisted during the Civil War as a private in a New York regiment of the Union Army.
He apparently defected shortly afterwards, the same source said.
“She also abandoned the family less than two years after the birth of her son, leaving him in the care of her mother and the Burghardt family,” the source said.
Author, sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois poses for a portrait at his home at 31 Grace Court in Brooklyn Heights in 1958 in New York City, New York. He died at age 95 on August 27, 1963. (David Attie/Getty Images)
Young Du Bois was raised in Massachusetts by his mother and her family. He received a college preparatory education at the racially integrated Great Barrington High School.
In June 1884, he became the first African American to graduate, according to Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
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In 1888, Du Bois enrolled at Harvard University as a junior (he had previously attended the black-only Fisk University in Tennessee).
He received a bachelor's degree cum laude in 1890, a master's degree in 1891, and a doctorate in 1895, according to the same source.
Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited its magazine, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1934.
According to the NAACP, he was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. “I assure you that the honor was Harvard's,” Du Bois is reported to have said on one occasion, as reported by Harvard University.
In 1896, DuBois married Nina Gomer and the couple had two children.
After the death of his first wife in 1950, DuBois married Shirley Graham, who remained his wife until his death.
American writer and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963), founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is pictured around 1900. He eventually left the NAACP and became a citizen of Ghana shortly before his death. (MPI/Getty Images)
Du Bois accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1896, conducting a study of the city's Seventh Ward, published in 1899 as “The Negro of Philadelphia,” according to History.com.
The study is considered one of the first examples of statistical work used for sociological purposes, with extensive fieldwork resulting in hundreds of door-to-door interviews by Du Bois, the source said.
Du Bois's activism was also overt at times.
While working as a professor at Atlanta University, Du Bois rose to national prominence when he publicly opposed Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Compromise,” an agreement that asserted that vocational education for blacks was more valuable to them than social advantages such as higher education or political office, Biography.com noted.
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Du Bois criticized Washington for failing to demand full equality for African Americans, as granted by the 14th Amendment, the same source said.
Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited its magazine, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1934.
WEB DuBois (1868-1963), American educator, editor, and writer who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Undated photograph. (Bettmann via Getty Images)
His collection of essays, “The Souls of Negro Folk” (1903), is a landmark of African-American literature, according to Britannica.com.
The NAACP aimed to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, equal protection of the law, and the right of all men to vote, respectively, according to the NAACP.
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Today, the NAACP continues to work to eliminate all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes, according to the same source.
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In his later years, Du Bois embarked on an ambitious project to create a new encyclopedia of the African diaspora, funded by the Ghanaian government, according to the NAACP.
“A citizen of the world to the end, Du Bois, aged 93, moved to Ghana to manage the project, acquiring citizenship of the African country in 1961,” the source said.
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Du Bois died in Ghana on August 27, 1963, the day before the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
He was 95 years old.
