WEB Du Bois

9 Key excerpts on "WEB Du Bois"

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  The New Negro in the Old South

  • Gabriel A. Briggs(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Rutgers University Press

    (Publisher)

  3. Soul Searching: W. E. B. Du Bois in the “South of Slavery”

  The white south is the most reactionary modern social organization which exists today in the civilized areas of the world. —W. E. B. Du Bois, “Ho! everyone that thirsteth,” May 26, 1958, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, MS 312, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

  William Edward Burghardt Du Bois epitomized the qualities that would come to be called the New Negro, and the fact that some of his major work antedates the consolidation of that concept is evidence that his work was as influential as it was prescient. He was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868. At just fifteen Du Bois began an intellectual career that spanned nearly a century. After graduating as valedictorian from Great Barrington High School, he attended Fisk University in Nashville, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1888. Du Bois then returned to Massachusetts, where he earned another bachelor’s (1890) and a master’s degree (1891) from Harvard. Following two years in which he studied at the University of Berlin (1892–94), he became the first African American to earn a PhD at Harvard (1895), with his dissertation, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870.”1

  Du Bois held a number of teaching appointments during his lifetime. His first experience was at Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he taught for two years while completing his doctoral dissertation. His second appointment was at the University of Pennsylvania (1896–97), where his proximity to African American urban residents facilitated his much-lauded sociological study The Philadelphia Negro (1899).2 Du Bois again traveled south in 1897 to accept a position at Atlanta University, where he taught history and economics for thirteen years, during which time he published numerous articles and book manuscripts on African American life, including his best-known work, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903.3 After many years in New York he returned to Atlanta University in 1934, where he spent a decade as the department chair of sociology. Among the highlights from these years were his publication of Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 and his creation of the academic journal Phylon (1940).4

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  The Wiley Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature, Volume 1

  1746 - 1920

  • Gene Andrew Jarrett, Gene Andrew Jarrett, Gene Andrew Jarrett(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963)

  When The Souls of Black Folk

  appeared in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois had already established himself as one of the most prolific and intellectually formidable African Americans in the United States. He had, by dint of hard work and enormous talent, risen from obscurity in the predominantly white Massachusetts Berkshires to a position of educational and political leadership. Du Bois’s rapid emergence as a dominant figure in politics and scholarship is without parallel in the history of African American leadership. At perhaps the nadir of post-Reconstruction race relations, Du Bois intertwined academic, literary, and political careers to steer the discourse and politics of race and civil rights in the twentieth century. Long before his death in 1963 at the age of 94, Du Bois had secured his reputation as perhaps the most influential and erudite intellectual of his time. In 1934 the Board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) spoke true when it said, upon Du Bois’s resignation, that, nonetheless, “many who have never read a word of his writings are his spiritual disciples and descendants.”

  Born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the only child of Mary Sylvina Burghardt and Alfred Du Bois. On his mother’s side, the Burghardts were some of the oldest citizens of Great Barrington, having lived there since the mid-eighteenth century; his father was an itinerant who abandoned his family within a year of his birth. Though lacking a father figure, the young William benefited from the maternal attention he received in his family. Du Bois later wrote that “[a]ll the way back in these dim distances it is the mothers and mothers of mothers who seem to count, while fathers are shadowy memories.” Nevertheless, he was a happy child in an environment that, if not idyllic, was remarkably free of racial discrimination. The town’s African American population was relatively small – Du Bois attended a predominantly white secondary school and worshipped in the white First Congregational Church of Great Barrington. He graduated in 1884 with high honors, the first African American graduate of his high school, and immediately went to work to save money for college. In March of 1885, Mary Sylvina Du Bois died unexpectedly, leaving her son impoverished. The local white community came to his aid; his neighbors and the Congregational Church donated scholarship funds. The ambitious Du Bois hoped to attend Harvard University, but it was beyond his means. Instead, he enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

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  Stalking Sociologists

  J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology

  • Mike Forrest Keen(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2W.E.B. Du Bois: Sociologist beyond the Veil

  William Edward Burghart Du Bois was born in 1868, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, in the small town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. An usually gifted child, Du Bois was the only Black student in his high school, and at age sixteen graduated among the top of his class. Though he wanted to go to Harvard, initially Du Bois was only able to attend the all-Black Fisk University, where, for the first time in his life, he entered what he described as “the land of the slaves ... a region where the world was split into white and black halves, where the darker half was held back by race prejudice and legal bonds, as well as by deep ignorance and dire poverty.”1

  Even though five to ten years younger than most of his classmates, upon entering Fisk, Du Bois placed as a sophomore. At Fisk, he became an impassioned orator and belligerent opponent of the color bar: “I was determined to make a scientific conquest of my environment, which would render the emancipation of the Negro race easier and quicker.”2 Following his graduation from Fisk in 1888, Du Bois received a scholarship and was admitted to Harvard as a junior. However, he was isolated from his fellow white students, rejected by the all-white Glee Club, and found himself “in Harvard, but not of it.”3 No doubt the bitterness from such rejection contributed to his being always on the move with little time for small talk, bare acknowledgment of the minimal pleasantries, and a reputation for abruptness, aloofness, and short-patience.4 Nevertheless, while there he became a devoted follower and friend of William James and upon graduating cum laude in 1890 was one of five students selected to speak at commencement. He spent the next two years as a Harvard fellow studying what would have been sociology had such a field been recognized at the time, but instead eventually received his Ph.D. in history in 1895. He was the first Black man to receive a doctorate degree from Harvard and went on to become the first Black sociologist in America.5

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  Racial Structure and Radical Politics in the African Diaspora

  Volume 2, Africana Studies

  • James L. Conyers(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In light of all of these developments in the discourse and debates in the modern reparations movement, that is, considering the two major tendencies and their criticisms of each others’ tactics, and the white and black conservatives’ criticisms of the two tendencies and their tactics, it may be beneficial at this point to turn to the history of African American political philosophy and social movements. More than mere intellectual exercise, taking a turn toward the history of African American political philosophy and social movements promises to offer us unique opportunity to learn lessons from the life-work of theorists and political activists whose thought and practices often prefigure and provide us with sociohistoric situation-specific points of departure and paradigms of possibility that can be used in our ongoing struggles. Though there are many classical African American social and political theorists whose ideas and activism have great import for the modern reparations movement, it is the radical political thought and multimovement leadership practices of W.E.B. Du Bois that I now intend to turn.

  Why Du Bois? And, what do we find when we turn to his radical political thought and multimovement leadership practices? In Du Bois’s life-work we are undoubtedly, and perhaps unexpectedly for some, exposed to an arsenal of criticisms that challenge and seek to provide solutions to several of the major social and political problems of the nineteenth, twentieth and, I should like to be one of the first to add, twenty-first centuries. His thought covers a wide range of intellectual terrain and touches various academic disciplines (history, sociology, philosophy, political science, economics, religion, education, and literature, among others). It can be said with little exaggeration that Du Bois laid the foundation, and provides a critical-theoretical framework, for the systematic study of the four key forms of domination and discrimination that have shaped the modern world: racism, sexism, colonialism, and capitalism. All of his work, whether we turn to his novels, volumes of poetry, plays, autobiographies, cultural criticisms, histories, social studies, political treatises, and economic analyses, emanate from the four aforementioned forms of oppression.

  With regard to the modern reparations movement, Du Bois’s pioneering work with the Pan-African movement and his efforts to argue for redress for anti-African racist wrongdoing and human rights abuses—by bringing the United States and other European imperial powers before the League of Nations and the United Nations—register as clear-cut examples of some of the ways in which his radical thought contributes to modern reparations discourse. The contention here, however, is not that Du Bois put forward a systematic or sophisticated reparations argument, but that there is a sense in which his thinking, at specific intervals in his oeuvre, lays a philosophical foundation and provides paradigms for modern Africana reparations arguments. One of the central tasks of this essay, then, will be to outline and develop Du Bois’s position on reparations by taking a piecemeal approach to several of his seminal works on Africana social, political, and economic justice.

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  A Critical Analysis of the Contributions of Notable Black Economists

  • Kojo A. Quartey(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Philadelphia Negro: A Special Study. Du Bois spent the summer of 1897 studying the black population in Farmville, Virginia. In the same year he obtained a position as professor of economics and history at Atlanta University. He studied the black population in Georgia and Alabama and published articles on the subject. Du Bois initiated a series of conferences focusing on the plight of the Negro. During this period he established the foundations for black sociology and became the leading social scientist on black America (Marable, 1986).

  In 1900 Du Bois served as secretary of the first Pan-African Conference in London, England. He was involved in writing numerous articles and books and in 1903 published his classic The Souls of Black Folk. In 1905 he became the main founder and secretary of the Niagara movement. In 1907 he founded and edited The Horizon, a Washington, DC monthly. He helped found the NAACP in 1910 and served as a member of the board, director of publicity and research, and editor of its journal, the Crisis. During his years as editor he struggled with the board over control of the Crisis. He began to become more politically involved in domestic affairs. He met with Max Weber in 1904 and had one of his essays included in a journal edited by Weber. He began to build an international reputation. In 1911 Du Bois was invited to participate in the first Universal Races Congress in London. Beginning to feel even more strongly that socialism was less deleterious to blacks, he joined the socialist party in 1911. By 1912 he had become disenchanted with the party and resigned. He became a leading political activist, leading boycotts and organizing movements (Du Bois, 1968).

  By 1919 the new Pan-African movement was afoot and Du Bois was a major organizer. In 1920 he received the NAACP Spingarn Award for his dedication to its cause. In 1921 and 1923 Du Bois chaired the second and third Pan-African Congresses in London, Brussels and Paris, and London, Paris and Lisbon, respectively. Du Bois was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge as special minister and ‘envoy extraordinary’ for the United States at the inauguration of President Charles D. B. King of Liberia in 1923 (Du Bois, 1985). He traveled for six weeks in the Soviet Union and came to believe that the Soviet system was more equitable in terms of race than that of the United States. Du Bois was involved in the Harlem Renaissance, contributing his book Dark Princess: A Romance

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  Socialism and Democracy in W.E.B. Du Bois's Life, Thought, and Legacy

  • Edward Carson, Gerald Horne, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Edward Carson, Gerald Horne, Phillip Luke Sinitiere(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  INTRODUCTION

  “If we neglect to mark this history, it may be distorted or forgotten”: Socialism and Democracy in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Life, Thought, and Legacy

  Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Edward Carson and Gerald Horne

   

  The 150th anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’s birth in 2018 offers an opportunity to reflect on his remarkable life and legacy in light of his specific commitments to socialism and democracy. The current political period of neoliberalism’s extractive inequality, the debilitating reality of economic precarity, an expansive and invasive surveillance state, the grotesque injustice of the prison industrial complex, the ongoing crisis of police violence and the militarization of law enforcement, and a White House unashamedly spewing white supremacist, nationalist rhetoric in word and deed calls scholars and activists to undertake thoughtful and analytical explorations about how Du Bois’s fidelity to socialism and democracy can inform current methodology and praxis. Considering such contemporary conditions, this issue collectively ponders how Du Bois’s radicalism can shape and re-texture historical understanding and underscore a reflective urgency about the future.

  The act of commemoration—remembering history critically through the lens of current affairs in order to mobilize collective action—was a practice on which Du Bois regularly commented. From his earliest scholarly book published in 1896 on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to the newspaper columns he wrote for The Crisis, Amsterdam News and other periodicals, to the poetry, prayers and plays he composed, to the final volume of historical fiction in the Black Flame trilogy published in 1961, Du Bois never failed to craft historical narrative, offer historical observations, and even deploy historiographical arguments that attended deeply to the humanity of African descended peoples. For example, in January 1957, six years before his death, Du Bois wrote “Negro History Centenaries” for the radical periodical National Guardian. He called for black individuals and organizations to commemorate anniversaries “which deeply affect the history of the Negro race and of his country.” Du Bois listed the centenary of the Dred Scot decision that year, and the centennial of John Brown’s death that was to occur in 1959. He suggested commemorating the Civil War’s anniversary in 1961 and acknowledging Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 100th birthday in 1972. “There are many other significant anniversaries which recall Negro history and the cultural tie of the black man with American history,” Du Bois wrote. However, he also warned that “If we neglect to mark this history, it may be distorted or forgotten.” Of the centennial celebrations themselves, Du Bois suggested that these events “should be occasions for calm and scientific inquiry into the past” instead of triumphalist or bombastic rhetoric heated to stoke “controversies or exacerbation of race hate.” According to Du Bois “persons of authority, white and black, Northern and Southern” should lead commemorative events since “[w]e must only be sure that every point of view has adequate and worthy representation.”1

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  Beginning classical social theory

  • Marcel Stoetzler(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  8

  The double-consciousness: W. E. B. Du Bois

  William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) had an unusual upbringing that, against a grim background, was also shaped by some benign aspects of American society of the time. He grew up in a small but prosperous, mostly white Anglo-Saxon industrial town in Massachusetts, New England, where only very few African-Americans lived, mostly as domestic servants. His own family background included black, Dutch, French and English ancestors. His father left him and his mother when Du Bois was still a small child, and she lived with the support of the local white upper class, who provided her with small jobs as well as charity, including a house to live in. She died when Du Bois was a teenager. Objectively, Du Bois and his mother were poor, but subjectively he grew up feeling almost a member of the local elite, where he seems not to have experienced much racial or even class discrimination. He is said to have assimilated well into the habitus of the Anglo-Saxon upper class: controlled manners, stiff white shirts and all that. He was a top student at high school and was given a scholarship to go to college. This was when reality kicked in: the college he attended was Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, a ‘historically black’ college in the segregationist South. (In the USA, a college is called ‘historically black’ if it was founded before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and had then been primarily for African-Americans.) He commented later that leaving small-town New England and moving to Nashville was what made him ‘a Negro’. The contrast between the two sets of social experiences also provided him with the principal theme of his life work: suddenly it was not his intelligence and genteel manners but his skin colour that placed him socially.

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  Leadership in Colonial Africa

  Disruption of Traditional Frameworks and Patterns

  • B. Jallow, B. Jallow(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  African Identities , Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004), p.151–171.

  Shapiro, Herbert, ed., African American History & Radical Historiography: Essays in Honor of Herbert Aptheker , Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press, 1998.

  Sinitiere, Phillip Luke, “A Legacy of Scholarship and Struggle: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Political Affairs of His Twilight Years,” Political Affairs , August 27, 2013, http://politicalaffairs.net/a-legacy-of-scholarship-and-struggle-w-e-b-du-bois-and-the-political-affairs-of-his-twilight-years-2/ .

  Stewart, James B, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois for Contemporary Black Studies,” The Journal of Negro Education , Vol. 53, No. 3 (1984), p. 296–311.

  Taylor, Ula, “Introduction: The Shaping of an Activist and Scholar,” The Journal of African American History , Vol. 96, No. 2 (2011), p. 204–214.

  ———, “Combing the Archive, Tracing the Diaspora: The Scholarship of Gerald Horne,” The Journal of African American History , Vol. 96, No. 2 (2011), p. 215–220.

  Troyanovsky, Oleg A., “An Advocate of Peace and Friendship among Peoples,” in Clarke (Ed.), in Pan-Africanism and the Liberation of Southern Africa: International Tribute to William E. B. DuBois . New York: United Nations Centre against Apartheid, 1978, p. 9–10.

  Turner, James, and C. Steven McGann, “Black Studies as an Integral Tradition in African-American Intellectual History,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion , Vol. 6. No. 2–3 (1976), p. 73–78.

  Young, Andrew, “An Advocate of Black Reconstruction in America,” in Clarke (Ed.), in Pan-Africanism and the Liberation of Southern Africa: International Tribute to William E. B. DuBois,

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  Discourse and Culture

  The Creation of America, 1870-1920

  • Alun Munslow(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 Black cultural and intellectual self-determination must be planned and undertaken not primarily by artisans, technicians, industrial managers and administrators, but by the college educated – the artists, poets, scholars – the race’s exceptional men. Du Bois’s own life reveals how the exercise of political and economic power was tied directly to the acquisition, production and institutions of knowledge, and rather than Washington’s expansive hegemonic emulation of white culture it was Du Bois’s greater sense of black consciousness that constituted the paradox in his transformist and hegemonic discourse and annexation by the white academic social and political imagination.

  Free born in the small Massachusetts town of Great Barrington in 1868, he died aged 95 in Ghana.3 He never knew his father, and his mother, a servant, died just after he graduated from High School. Du Bois quickly came to the conclusion that academic study would immunise him from the racism of everyday life,4 and scholarly success was the path to political as well as economic equality.5 After graduating from High School in 1885 Du Bois went to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He had hoped to secure a place at Harvard but lack of finance made this impossible. While at Fisk Du Bois discovered his race allegiance as he became conscious of the raw edge of southern racism.6 During his three years at Fisk (1885-8) and despite his new familiarity with racial difference he remained optimistic that the race problem could be resolved by the intelligent on both sides. Upon completion of his Fisk degree in the fall of 1888 he entered Harvard College and for two years was engaged by an outstanding generation of teachers who introduced him to empirical history and the social sciences. This experience promoted within him the desire to explain scientifically the character of race and cultural assimilation.7

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