CHERKASOVA DU BOIS, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
EVGENIA V.CHERKASOVA DU BOIS, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was the leading intellectual in the African American community in the first half of the twentieth century. Arguably the most prolific writer and thinker of black letters, Du Bois is considered the founder of Black Studies in the USA. His rise to prominence is marked by a series of ‘firsts’ at the close of the nineteenth century: his dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States (1895), was the first volume in Harvard Historical Series; his speech ‘The Conservation of the Races’ at the inaugural meeting of the American Negro Academy (1897) gained him major recognition; and he wrote the first sociological study of the African American community published in the USA, The Philadelphia Negro (1899). Over the next 70 years, Du Bois would examine racial politics from a variety of perspectives: early segregationism and support of BOOKER T.WASHINGTON, later integrationism, pan-Africanism and even later an embrace of socialism and Afrocentrism. At the close of the nineteenth century, however, Du Bois was the emergent thinker of the most sophisticated ideas concerning race, African Americans and cultural dualism, an idea begun in ‘The Conservation of the Races’ and evolving into the more profound assessment of the state of the Negro in the USA as ‘double consciousness’ in his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), which would come to support his struggle for racial integration in the USA.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on 23 February 1868 to Mary Burghardt Du Bois and Alfred Du Bois (who later deserted the family), Du Bois was raised in a family that encouraged him. Du Bois later described his education in an integrated school system as one unmarked by racist discrimination. He graduated with honours in 1884, and in 1885 he travelled south to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, to learn more about his black heritage. Here Du Bois was exposed to southern racism, and, more importantly,
he experienced his first full immersion into the lives of African Americans. He graduated from Fisk with his bachelor’s degree in 1888. In a story he details in The Souls of Black Folk,
he briefly became a teacher at a black school in rural Tennessee, where he experienced a level of poverty and a lack of education for which he was unprepared by his own experience. He also learned, however, about the great resourcefulness of the people he came to know well. Following this experience, Du Bois applied and won for a scholarship at Harvard University. Graduating in 1890 with a second bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in 1891, he travelled to Germany for two years of study at the University of Berlin. During his time at Harvard, Du Bois studied under WILLIAM
Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 176
JAMES and Albert Bushnell Hart, one of the founders of sociology. Returning to the USA, he graduated with his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1895.
Du Bois sought work as an academic, landing his first position at Wilberforce University, founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ohio, where he met Alexander Crummel, one of the leading black intellectuals, who later invited the young scholar to speak at the inaugural meeting of the American Negro Academy (1897). After
a year on the faculty, during which time he met and married Nina Gomer, Du Bois took a research position at the University of Pennsylvania, where, despite inadequate resources,
he completed the research on the Philadelphia black community that resulted in The Philadelphia Negro (1899). In 1897 he joined the faculty of Atlanta University, where he spent the next 13 years engaging in issues concerning race in the USA.
During his time as an academic, Du Bois came to be recognized as a leading public intellectual. As he came into his own, he began to separate himself from the Washingtonian stance of co-operation and accommodation of southern white leadership. As his resistance and reservations grew, Du Bois came to publicly challenge Washington and his followers, including in The Souls of Black Folk a lengthy chapter entitled ‘Of Mr. Booker T.Washington and Others’, where he chided the leader for his passive position, creating a national audience for what would become an unstinting campaign for civil rights. In 1905, he met with twenty-eight other black leaders in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, to organize a more militant movement. The resulting Niagara Movement became
a vehicle for Du Bois to work actively against Washington’s position. Washington responded with direct pressure, ruining the careers of some of the Niagaraites through his use of political prestige. The Niagara Movement imploded in 1908, resulting, however, in the beginnings of a new organization. The movement had drawn the attention of a small group of progressive whites who joined forces with the remaining members to create the biracial movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Du Bois was one of the few black members to occupy a position of power in the first two decades of the NAACP. In 1910, he resigned his position at Atlanta, moved to New York and came into his own politically. He founded The Crisis, the monthly journal of the NAACP, fought for editorial control of the journal and for the next 24 years had a forum available to promote all his ideas. During the Harlem Renaissance, The Crisis published numerous new artists’ work, creating a literary phenomenon. Growing more radical in a battle against imperialism, he embraced pan-Africanism and socialism, and came into disagreement with Walter White, head of the NAACP; he resigned as editor of The Crisis in 1934.
While Du Bois was a staunch integrationist for most of his life, he came to embrace ideas of nationalism later in life, ultimately leaving the USA for Ghana in 1961, where he became a citizen and lived until his death in 1963.
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» Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought
» ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENTS AND IDEAS
» SIMON J.POTTER ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822–87)
» S.JONES BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1850–1932)
» THE BODY, MEDICINE, HEALTH AND DISEASE
» BONALD, LOUIS DE (1754–1840)
» PAMELA PILBEAM CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795–1881)
» CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE (1768–1848)
» CHINESE THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» CIESZKOWSKI, AUGUST (1814–94)
» JOHN MORROW COMBE, GEORGE (1788–1858)
» ALAN R.KING COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857)
» The conservative reaction to radical natural-rights theory
» French conservatives and the challenge of the revolutionary past
» Institutional continuity and intellectual and moral discontinuity in British conservatism
» JOHN MORROW CONSIDÉRANT, VICTOR (1808–93)
» CONSTANT, BENJAMIN (1767–1830)
» CLIVE E.HILL DEMOCRACY, POPULISM AND RIGHTS
» PAMELA PILBEAM DEWEY, JOHN (1859–1952)
» DILTHEY, WILHELM (1833–1911)
» DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR (1821–81)
» CHERKASOVA DU BOIS, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
» Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism
» Other forms of non-Marxian socialism
» GREGORY CLAEYS EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803–82)
» ENFANTIN, BARTHÉLEMY-PROSPER (1796–1864)
» Revolutions, citizenship and sexual difference
» Socialism, labour, evangelical reform and public speaking
» Women’s rights at mid-century: an international movements
» KATHRYN M.TOMASEK FEUERBACH, LUDWIG (1804–72)
» FOURIER, CHARLES (1772–1837)
» KARINE VARLEY FREUD, SIGMUND (1856–1939)
» GREGORY CLAEYS GANDHI, MOHANDAS K. (1869–1948)
» GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE (1807–82)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN GEORGE, HENRY (1839–97)
» GOBINEAU, JOSEPH COMTE DE (1816– 82)
» LYMAN TOWER SARGENT GREEN, T.H. (1836–82)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
» From conjectural history to the Whig interpretation of history
» The critique of the idea of progress
» HUMBOLDT, WILHELM, FREIHERR VON (1767–1835)
» TIM KIRK HUXLEY, T.H. (1825–95)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN IMPERIALISM AND EMPIRE
» SIMON J.POTTER INDIAN THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» INDUSTRIALISM, POVERTY AND THE WORKING CLASSES
» INTELLECTUALS, ELITES AND MERITOCRACY
» Tanzimat and the Ottoman Empire
» Other responses to colonialism and modernity
» Opening of the country and the Meiji Restoration
» CHUSHICHI TSUZUKI JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826)
» JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835–82)
» One person, many faces: an introduction to a resonant life
» Stages on Life’s Way: from aesthetic, via ethical, to religious
» Intermission: the Corsair affair
» KROPOTKIN, PIETR (1842–1921)
» LABRIOLA, ANTONIO (1843–1904)
» LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE DE (1790– 1869)
» Continental liberalism FRANCE
» GREGORY CLAEYS LIEBKNECHT, WILHELM (1826–1900)
» LOMBROSO, CESARE (1835–1909)
» MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON (1800–59)
» Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
» Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE (1753–1821)
» MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT (1766– 1834)
» MARSHALL, ALFRED (1842–1924)
» GREGORY CLAEYS MARX AND MARXISM
» The development of Marxism to 1914
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAURRAS, CHARLES (1868–1952)
» MEINECKE, FRIEDRICH (1862–1954)
» MICHAEL LEVIN MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–73)
» THE NATION, NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONAL PRINCIPLE
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844–1900)
» DAN STONE NOVELS, POETRY AND DRAMA
» The development of Owen’s thought after 1820
» The development of Paine’s thought
» DAVID GLADSTONE PARETO, WILFREDO (1848–1923)
» Alternatives to classical economics
» Utilitarianism and the marginal revolution
» ANTHONY BREWER PROUDHON, PIERRE-JOSEPH (1809– 65)
» ‘Psychology has a long past but a short history’
» ‘Time present and time past’: James’s Principles
» RANKE, LEOPOLD VON (1795–1886)
» Biblical criticism and moral critiques
» TIMOTHY LARSEN RENAN, JOSEPH-ERNEST (1823–1892)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS RICARDO, DAVID (1772–1823)
» ROMANTICISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEAS OF THE SELF
» Individualism, individuality, the self and psyche
» From alienation to Romantic love
» Critique of Political Economy
» Nihilism, populism, anarchism and early Marxism
» Religious and moral developments in Russian literature and philosophy
» SAINT-SIMON, HENRI DE (1760–1825)
» SAY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (1767–1832)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SCHELLING, F.W.J. (1775–1854)
» SCHLEGEL, CARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH VON (1772–1829)
» CLIVE E.HILL SIEYÈS, EMMANUEL-JOSEPH (1748– 1836)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SIMMEL, GEORG (1858–1918)
» DAN STONE SISMONDI, JEAN-CHARLES-LÉONARD SIMONDE DE (1773–1842)
» Social Darwinism and politics
» Social Darwinism, secularism and religion
» MICHAEL LEVIN SOREL, GEORGES (1847–1922)
» SPENCER, HERBERT (1820–1903)
» CLIVE E.HILL STEWART, DUGALD (1753–1828)
» TIM KIRK STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH (1808–74)
» TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (1861–1941)
» S.JONES THEORIES OF EDUCATION AND CHARACTER FORMATION
» THEORIES OF LAW, CRIMINOLOGY AND PENAL REFORM
» JOHN PRATT THEORIES OF THE STATE AND SOCIETY: THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
» THIERS, LOUIS-ADOLPHE (1797–1877)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817–62)
» ALAN D.HODDER TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE (1805–59)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA TÖNNIES, FERDINAND (1855–1936)
» Middle and late nineteenth-century utopianism LIBERALISM, CONSERVATISM AND UTOPIANISM
» LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIALISM
» GREGORY CLAEYS WASHINGTON, BOOKER T. (1856–1915)
» CLIVE E.HILL WEBER, MAX (1864–1920)
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