Du Bois constitute not only a personal history but also the autobiography of a race of people in their proud ascent from slavery to freedom and in their courageous quest for equality–a struggle that Du Bois had once described as an unending battle against the forces of hell. His memoir Dusk Of Dawn, written in 1940, and the posthumously published three volumes of The Correspondence of W.E.B.

In the last year of his life he moved to Ghana, and took citizenship in that nation. Du Bois embraced leftist ideology, was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1958, and formally joined the Communist Party in 1961. He published a novel, Dark Princess, in 1928, and he continued to edit The Crisis until 1934, when he began to reject the conservatism of the NAACP’s political views.ĭu Bois’s gradual radicalization paralleled that of a number of other black intellectuals and artists, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson prominently among them. Through the NAACP, Du Bois was also instrumental in creating opportunities for intellectual and artistic advancement for blacks and ways of rewarding and encouraging excellence, notably his collaboration with the Spingarns in creating the prestigious medals which bear that family’s name. A prime mover in that fast-paced, exciting cultural explosion, Du Bois extended a helping hand to many of his younger colleagues, publishing in the pages of The Crisis the best poetry and prose of African-American writers, among them Langston Hughes, who dedicated The Negro Speaks of Rivers to Du Bois.

During this period he also published his classic treatise The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the best known of many passionate and well-argued philosophical and sociological studies of his race, which also included The Philadelphia Negro, John Brown, The Gift of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction, and Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace.Īt the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Du Bois was a familiar presence in New York. In 1909 Du Bois founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and in 1910 he launched its historic magazine The Crisis. Washington’s educational views as too limiting, and organized the Niagara Movement, which strongly opposed racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Using Atlanta University as his base from 1897 to 1910, he opposed Booker T. from Harvard in 1895 before entering the worlds of academia and activism. DuBois, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital ID ggbain 07435īorn during the painful period of Reconstruction, Du Bois graduated from Fisk University in 1888 and earned a Ph.D.

The songs of web dubois