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

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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.