William Du Bois

{draw:frame} William DuBois
William Du Bois was born in 23rd February 1868. William grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and was brought up by his mother as his father had shortly left after his birth. His mother’s family were from a group of free black people living in Great Barrington at the time. When his mother became ill he started to work part time after school so that they could have an income. He then decided the best way for them to get a good life were if he was to get an education and work. Du Bois eventually attended Frisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Living in Tennessee under the segregation was where he first realised that there was a problem with civil rights for the black people. In 1888 he went to Harvard College and earned a Bachelor’s degree and was the first black man to get a PhD. William Du Bois then became a civil rights activist and started to write books on the subject. He became known as the ‘Father of Pan-Africanism’. In 1903 he wrote ‘The Soles of the black folks’ which had a ground breaking turn out. This was followed by many other civil rights books. Du Bois's life and work were an inseparable mixture of scholarship, protest activity, and polemics. All of his efforts were geared toward gaining equal treatment for black people in a world dominated by whites and toward marshalling and presenting evidence to refute the myths of racial inferiority. In 1905 Du Bois was a founder and general secretary of the Niagara movement, an African American protest group of scholars and professionals. Du Bois founded and edited the Moon (1906) and the Horizon (1907-1910) as organs for the Niagara movement. In 1909 Du Bois was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and from 1910 to 1934 served it as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of the Crisis, its monthly magazine. In the Crisis, Du Bois directed a constant stream of...