1. W.E.B. Du Bois,
  Du Bois had always wanted to go to Harvard and he was initially disappointed when he learned that it had been arranged that he attend Fisk University in Nashville. But the experience changed his life. It helped to clarify his identity and pointed him in the direction of his life's work. When Du Bois left for Fisk in the fall of 1885, it was the last time he would call Great Barrington his home. His mother had died during that summer and Du Bois entered a world that he would claim for his own. Du Bois arrived in Nashville a serious, contemplative, self-conscious young man with habits and attitudes formed by a boyhood in Victorian New England. At Fisk he encountered sons and daughters of former slaves who had borne the mark of oppression but had nourished a rich cultural and spiritual tradition that Du Bois recognized as his own. Du Bois also encountered the White South. The achievements of Reconstruction were being destroyed by the white politicians and businessmen who had gained political control. Blacks were being terrorized at the polls and were being driven back into the economic status that differed from institutional slavery in little but name. Du Bois saw the suffering and the dignity of rural blacks when he taught school during the summers in the East Tennessee countryside, and he resolved that in some way his life would be dedicated to a struggle against racial and economic oppression. He was determined to continue his education and his perseverance was rewarded when he was offered a scholarship to study at Harvard University.

2. W.E.B (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois was born on February 23, 1863 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
 Du Bois was born in the small New England village of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, three years after the end of the Civil War. Unlike most black Americans, his family had not just emerged from slavery. His great-grandfather had fought in the American Revolution, and the Burghardts had been an accepted part of the community for generations. Yet from his earliest years Du Bois was aware of differences that set him apart from his Yankee neighbors. In addition to the austere hymns of his village Congregational Church, Du Bois learned the songs of a much more ancient tradition from his grandmother. Passed from generation to generation, their original meanings long forgotten, the songs of Africa were sung around the fire in Du Bois' boyhood home. Thus, from the beginning, Du Bois was aware of an earlier tradition that set him apart from his New England community - a distant past shrouded in mystery, in sharp contrast to the detailed chronicle of Western Civilization that he learned at school.
 Du Bois' father left home soon after Du Bois was born. The youngster was raised largely by his mother, who imparted to her child the sense of a special destiny. She encouraged his studies and his adherence to the Victorian virtues and pieties characteristic of rural New England in the 19th century. Du Bois in turn gravely accepted a sense of duty toward his mother that transcended all other loyalties.

3. Du Bois knew little of his father
Du Bois knew little of his father. Alfred Du Bois married Mary Burghardt in Soon after Du Bois was born, his father left, never to return. Du Bois described him as "a dreamer-- romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable, he had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a beloved vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little."
Du Bois knew little of his father. Alfred Du Bois married Mary Burghardt in Soon after Du Bois was born, his father left, never to return. Du Bois described him as "a dreamer-- romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable, he had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a beloved vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little."

4. Du Bois at the age of four, dressed to conform to the Victorian era's idea of how well-behaved little boys should appear.
 Du Bois excelled at school and outshone his white contemporaries. While in high school he worked as a correspondent for New York newspapers and became something of a prodigy in the eyes of the community. As he reached adolescence he began to become aware of the subtle social boundaries which he was expected to observe. This made him all the more determined to force the community to recognize his academic achievements.

5. Du Bois at age nineteen.
  Du Bois was clearly a young man of promise. The influential members of his community recognized this and quietly decided his future. Great Barrington, like most of New England, still glowed with the embers of the abolitionist fires that had only recently been dampened with the ending of the Reconstruction in the South. Together with the missionary inclinations of the Congregationalist Church, these sensibilities manifested themselves in the community's attitude towards Du Bois, who presented them with an opportunity to perform an act of Christian duty toward a promising example of what they considered to be the less fortunate races of the world.

6.  Du Bois had always wanted to go to Harvard and he was initially disappointed when he learned that it had been arranged that he attend Fisk University in Nashville. But the experience changed his life. It helped to clarify his identity and pointed him in the direction of his life's work. When Du Bois left for Fisk in the fall of 1885, it was the last time he would call Great Barrington his home. His mother had died during that summer and Du Bois entered a world that he would claim for his own.
Jubilee Hall at Fisk University is the oldest permanent building for the higher education of African Americans in the United States

7. Du Bois with Fisk University faculty and students in front of Jubilee Hall, c. 1887.

8. Du Bois arrived in Nashville a serious, contemplative, self-conscious young man with habits and attitudes formed by a boyhood in Victorian New England. At Fisk he encountered sons and daughters of former slaves who had borne the mark of oppression but had nourished a rich cultural and spiritual tradition that Du Bois recognized as his own. Du Bois also encountered the White South.

9. The achievements of Reconstruction were being destroyed by the white politicians and businessmen who had gained political control. Blacks were being terrorized at the polls and were being driven back into the economic status that differed from institutional slavery in little but name. Du Bois saw the suffering and the dignity of rural blacks when he taught school during the summers in the East Tennessee countryside, and he resolved that in some way his life would be dedicated to a struggle against racial and economic oppression. He was determined to continue his education and his perseverance was rewarded when he was offered a scholarship to study at Harvard University.

12. Fisk University Class of 1888.

15. Du Bois at Harvard, 1890, or University of Berlin, 1892.
Du Bois' life was a struggle of warring ideas and ideals. He entered Harvard during its golden age and studied with William James and Albert Bushnell Hart. It was a progressive era and Du Bois was smitten with the ideal of science - an objective truth that could dispel once and for all the irrational prejudices and ignorances that stood in the way of a just social order. He brought back the German scientific ideal from the University of Berlin and was one of the first to initiate scientific sociological study in the United States. For years he labored at Atlanta University and created landmarks in the scientific study of race relations. Yet a shadow fell over his work as he saw the nation retreating into barbarism. Repressive segregation laws, lynching, and terror were on the increase despite the march of science. Du Bois' faith in the detached role of the scientist was shaken, and with the Atlanta Riot of 1906 Du Bois with his "Litany at Atlanta" passionately sounded a challenge to those forces of repression and destruction. At a time when Booker T. Washington counseled acceptance of the social order, Du Bois sounded a call to arms and with the founding of the Niagara Movement and later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People entered a new phase of his life. He became an impassioned champion of direct assault on the legal, political, and economic system that thrived on the exploitation of the poor and the powerless. As he began to point out the connections between the plight of Afro- Americans and those who suffered under colonial rule in other areas of the world, his struggle assumed international proportions. The Pan-African Movement that flowered in the years after World War I was the beginning of the creation of a third world consciousness.

16. Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph. D
Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1896.
Du Bois (at right) was one of six speakers at his Harvard commencement. While at Harvard, Du Bois wrote, "I was quite voluntarily and willingly outside its social life... I asked no fellowship of my fellow students. I found friends-- and most interesting and inspiring friends-- among the colored folk of Boston and surrounding places."

17. Admission card, signed by economist Gustav Schmoller, admitting Du Bois to his seminar at the University of Berlin.

18. While at Atlanta University, Du Bois planned a long-range series of studies dealing with the issues and problems that faced black Americans.

19. Du Bois at the Paris International Exposition in 1900 where he won a gold medal for his exhibit on the achievement of black Americans.

20. Du Bois met Nina Gomer while at Wilberforce and they were married in Their first child, Burghardt, died as an infant in Atlanta from a typhoid epidemic.

21. Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1909.

22. Scene of Lynching at Clanton, Alabama, Aug. 1891

23. The lynching of Lige Daniels. August 3, 1920, Center, Texas.
White individuals employed vigilante-style violence to keep blacks “in their place,” and even law enforcement agencies helped uphold the separate and unequal society. Sadly, Texas ranked third nationally in the lynching of black persons, as mobs murdered more than 100 black people between 1900 and In 1916 at Waco, approximately 10,000 whites turned out in a holiday-like atmosphere to watch a mob mutilate and burn a black man named Jesse Washington.

24. This 1930 photo shows the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. This image is a part of the "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" exhibit.

26. Du Bois and other black leaders of similar opinions organized what became known as the Niagara Movement. It was the first organization to seek full political and economic rights for Afro-Americans at a national level. By 1910, the organization led to the founding of the NAACP.
As a result of the intransigence of Booker T. Washington's "Tuskegee Machine," Du Bois and other black leaders of similar opinions organized what became known as the Niagara Movement. It was the first organization to seek full political and economic rights for Afro-Americans at a national level. By 1910, the organization led to the founding of the NAACP.

27. The NAACP was formed by a coalition of black leaders and white liberals, and Du Bois left Atlanta University in 1910 to become the NAACP's Director of Publicity and Research. Through this position he spearheaded efforts to enact anti-lynching laws and to initiate legislation that would end jim-crow practices in the nation's public institutions and transportation systems. Du Bois was a man of firm opinions and this trait often brought him into conflict with others on the NAACP's Board of Directors. When, in the depression year of 1934, Du Bois advised blacks to patronize black businesses, he was ironically forced to resign from the NAACP for advocating what was considered to be a plan of voluntary segregation.
Du Bois (2nd row, 2nd from right) in a NAACP sponsored demonstration against lynching and mob violence against blacks.

28. Du Bois receiving the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, Atlanta University, 1920.

29. Du Bois and members of The Crisis staff in their New York office.

31. Resolutions established by 15 countries at the first Pan-African Congress, Paris, February 1919.
Resolutions (page 1) established by 15 countries at the first Pan-African Congress, Paris, February 1919.

32. Especially after World War II, Du Bois' concerns became increasingly international. In 1945, he helped present a petition on behalf of oppressed minorities before the United Nations. Du Bois was horrified by the Cold War policy of the Truman administration and believed that the efforts to halt the spread of Communism often obscured the real desire of colonial peoples to gain political and social self-determination. As he became more vocal in behalf of peace, he came under the suspicion of his government. During the McCarthy era, many attempts were made to silence debate on issues affecting foreign policy and Du Bois became another victim of that effort. At the age of 83, Du Bois was indicted for failing to register as a "foreign agent." Although acquitted, the government had effectively attached a stigma to Du Bois' name and he became isolated from the mainstream of the growing civil rights movement which depended upon the goodwill of the Federal Government to advance its aims.
Speakers at the Pan-African Congress held in Brussels, Belgium, in Du Bois is 2nd from right.

33. In 1951, in the midst of his battle with the Justice Department, Du Bois, now a widower, married Shirley Graham, a friend of long standing, on the eve of his 83rd birthday.

34. Du Bois carried his message to the political arena when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1951 on the American Labor Party's ticket.
In the years after World War II the desperate struggles that Du Bois had waged came together in a vision that was to challenge many of the assumptions of his contemporaries. He had fought for many progressive causes but saw them consumed by a cold war mentality that silenced rational debate.

35. Du Bois, with Shirley Graham Du Bois (right) and other indicted members of the Peace Information Center, in Washington prior to their court hearing.

36. Throughout the 1950s, Du Bois' concerns became increasingly international, and he traveled and lectured on a number of issues including disarmament and the future of Africa.

37. Throughout his career Du Bois was the object of investigation by Government intelligence agencies. Especially during the 1950s, the FBI kept Du Bois' activities under constant surveillance.

38. If Du Bois was a prophet without honor in his own country, he was hailed as a visionary by non-western nations. He was warmly received in visits to the Peoples' Republic of China and the Soviet Union and was a guest in the newly independent states of Africa. Du Bois also devoted his time to writing and speaking, producing an enormous amount of articles, speeches and a trilogy of novels which he titled The Black Flame.
Du Bois addressing the first Afro-Asian Writers' Conference, Tashkent, U.S.S.R., October, 1958.
Du Bois in the garden of Paul Robeson's home in London, Fall 1958.
Premier Nikita Khrushchev greets Du Bois on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1958.
Du Bois with Chairman Mao Tse Tung, 1959.
The Peoples' Republic of China honored Du Bois on his 91st birthday in Peking.

39. Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah offers a toast on Du Bois' 95th birthday, c. February, 1963.
 Du Bois' mature vision was a reconciliation of the "sense of double consciousness"- the "two warring ideals" of being both black and an American - that he had written about fifty years earlier. He came to accept struggle and conflict as essential elements of life, but he continued to believe in the inevitable progress of the human race - that out of individual struggles against a divided self and political struggles of the oppressed against their oppressors, a broader and fuller human life would emerge that would benefit all of mankind.
Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah offers a toast on Du Bois' 95th birthday, c. February, 1963.

40. At the age of ninety-three, Du Bois was invited to Ghana by President Kwame Nkrumah to assume editorship of the Encyclopedia Africana, a monumental project involving scholars from around the world. He assumed Ghanaian citizenship and lived in the land of his fathers until his death at the age of ninety-five on August 27, the day before the March on Washington that marked the climax of the civil rights struggle in the United States.

41. One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in Life
One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in Life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.    -- W.E.B. Du Bois in his last statement to the world, 1963
One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in Life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.    -- W.E.B. Du Bois in his last statement to the world, 1963

42. “How does it feel to be a problem?”
W.E.B. Du Bois,

43. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. p. 124.

44. One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes — foolishly, perhaps, but fervently — that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development. p. 125.

45. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, — not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of filth from white whoremongers and adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.
A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. p. 126.

46. They still press on, they still nurse the dogged hope, — not a hope of nauseating patronage, not a hope of reception into charmed social circles of stock-jobbers, pork-packers, and earl-hunters, but the hope of a higher synthesis of civilization and humanity, a true progress, with which the chorus "Peace, good will to men,“
"May make one music as before, But vaster."
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