.jpg)
W.E.B. Du Bois
2018
Sociologist· NAACP Co-Founder · Activist
William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois (“du boyz”) was born on February 23, 1868, in Massachusetts.
Although W.E.B. Du Bois had attended a Congregationalist church as a child, as an adult he described himself as agnostic or a freethinker and refused to lead public prayers. He wrote:
“When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer [...] I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed.”
In his autobiography, he advocated “dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.” Du Bois said American churches were the most discriminatory of all because they did not support racial equality in terms of education, economic opportunity, or political leadership.
Dr. Du Bois and other activists started the Niagara Movement to end racial segregation and to lead the charge against Jim Crow laws in the U.S. Ironically, though, the Niagara Movement was so named because it was illegal for Blacks to meet in groups in New York in that era.
Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, author, writer and editor. He attended the University of Berlin and was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University (1895). He taught history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University and co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. He wrote:
“I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.”
Du Bois encouraged African Americans to insist on equal rights and better jobs, rather than passively submit to the segregation and discrimination of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise, which was an informal, unwritten “agreement” that Southern Blacks would submit to White political rule, while Southern Whites would ensure that Blacks (who were mostly rural at that time) would receive basic education, some economic opportunities, and justice under the law; and Northern Whites would invest in Southern businesses and support Black education charities. The Atlanta Compromise is often said to be “not worth the paper it’s written on,” a joking reference to the fact that the “agreement” was, in fact, not a written document.
Du Bois’s activism intensified after seeing in a store window the chopped-off, burned hand of a lynching victim near Atlanta in 1899. As stated in David Levering Lewis’s 1993 biography, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868–1919 (New York City: Henry Holt and Co.), the victim, Sam Hose, had been tortured, burned and hung by a mob of two thousand Whites (p. 162). Du Bois said he "could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved" (p. 163). Du Bois pointed out that:
"… the cure wasn't simply telling people the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth.”