W.E.B. Du Bois
From Harlem Renaissance
Contents |
Du Bois' Early Years
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23 1868. His roots went back to the Bahamas, Haiti, and Africa. He was born to Mary Burghardt and Alfred Du Bois. However, shortly after William was born his father left him and never returned. He was born and raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The town was quiet, and had no flashy carriages or social life. The local newspaper Berkshire Courier would mostly write about births, marriages, and trips to New York city. During the time that he lived there, there were around 25-50 African Americans living there out of the 5000 total residents there. His education began when he was taught to read by a man named John W, who moved his building from North Adams, MA to Railroad Street which was where William would frequently go. William grew up with many more privileges than most blacks living in America at that time. He did not suffer from severe economic hardships or encounters with harsh racism.
Du Bois' Education
Du Bois attended Searles High School and graduated at age 16. He was very academically gifted, and enjoyed surpassing his fellow students in school work. He was the Valedictorian of his graduating class and was the only black in his graduating class of 12. At age 15 he was a regular correspondent to the New York Globe. Shortly after his graduation he was orphaned. That forced him to fund his own college education. However, he won a scholarship at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. During his time in Tennessee, Du Bois spent two summers teaching at a local school. Du Bois taught at the school to expand his knowledge about his people and the south. Du Bois received his bachelor's from Fisk in 1888 and won a scholarship to Harvard University. He received his second bachelor's degree in 1890, his Masters and then his Doctoral Degree in 1895. Shortly after he earned his Master's Degree, he decided to study at Berlin University for 2 years. During his 2 years in Berlin, he began to notice race problems outside of the Americas. His doctoral thesis was called, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, which still to this day is in Harvard's Historical Series. He became the first African American to receive a P.H.D in History from Harvard.
His Later Years
As an alumni of Searles High, he addressed the small town of Great Barrington that he would help clean out the Green River. "This town, like many towns has turned its back on its river," he quoted. "We should restore its ancient beauty, making it the center of a town valley." At 26, after 20 years of education, William decided to start his real work. He became a teacher at Wilberforce in Ohio for $800 a year. After his two years at Wilberforce, he accepted a special fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. This gave him the opportunity to study Blacks as a social system. He eagerly did research and concluded that the race problem was because of ignorance. Du Bois was married to Nina Gomer from 1895-1950. He had a daughter named Yolande, who later married Countee Cullen, a famous poet. Du Bois later married Shirley Graham in 1951. Du Bois later accepted a position at Atlanta University to continue his studies in Sociology. For thirteen years he studied negro morality, urbanization, the negro church, and negro crime. That gave him a much deeper understanding of the negro community. He then decided to stop things like the 'Ghettoization' of Harlem. This was when some buildings on streets like West 135th Street would be entirely occupied by African Americans. One of his famous quotes states, “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” He was determined to unearth as much as he could about this subject. He was trying to find a solution to color prejudice, and his thorough studies led to historical investigation. . He then published a book titled The Philadelphia Negro. From 1895 to 1910, when he made his famous speech, Atlanta Compromise, Du Bois was considered the most powerful black male in America. In 1905, Du Bois went to Boston to address a rally; during the rally he was verbally challenged by William Monroe Trotter, who was an old friend from Harvard.
Forming the NAACP
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was formed by thousands of amazing and courageous people, it has been in existence for more than 99 years. The founders in 1909, included W.E.B Du Bois himself, Ida Wells-Barnett, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, and William English Walling. These brave souls led 'The Call' to renew the struggle for civil rights. They were not all black either, many different ethnicities helped and contributed to this group. Despite forms of violence and hostile policies, the NAACP preserved and helped change history for people of color. Some of their movements include the Rosa Parks protest, the Voting Rights bill, and the Anti-Lynching bill. Despite the 30 branches he helped found, the Association lacked the organization and the sufficient funds to fully support itself. It also could not hire enough staff members or supporters as well as attracting a mass of people.
One of their first cases in 1910, was the Pink Franklin case. In this case, a black farmer killed a police officer in self-defense when his house was broken into at 3 AM. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court where they ruled the farmer guilty. A few years later, an African American in Baltimore moved into a mostly white neighborhood, and Baltimore attempted to pass the first official segregation law. Many states followed afterwards, such as Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri. The NAACP fought hard against these proposals, and were quite successful. The NAACP managed to prove these laws were unconstitutional, but some states still continued to practice segregation. Infuriated, the association launched a national protest. They successfully accused a Supreme Court justice of favoring laws that discriminated against people of color. The lawyers of NAACP in 1935 won the legal battle to let a person of color enroll in the University of Maryland. A few years later Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front of a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and with the help of the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) started the biggest civil rights protest in the history of America. The NAACP helped win many other cases and lead many other protests but some years after the Rosa Parks incident, Du Bois died on August 27, 1963.
His Beliefs & Achievements
W.E.B Du Bois was one of the founders of the idea of the 'New Negro.' The thinking behind the idea of the New Negro was that if African Americans put their resources and money behind educating the best and brightest African Americans, that those people would be able to have a better life, and would slowly raise the standards for all African Americans. Basically, this idea was something like choosing one person in a school or neighborhood, and everyone would focus on helping them improve their life. His view was one that got many people thinking, but not everyone agreed with it. Another civil rights activist, Marcus Garvey believed that all African Americans should have the chance to up their social standing.
W.E.B Du Bois was the founder of a famous Harlem magazine called The Crisis, which is a setting in the well known book Harlem Summer, by Walter Dean Myers. He won a famous award called the 'Spingarn Medal' in 1920, and the 'Stalin Peace Prize' in 1958. After he died, a W.E.B Du Bois award was invented for African-American scholars and community leaders. Although he was an activist, he also wrote a poem that really held his beliefs and described himself. His poem is called I am the Smoke King and was written in 1907. (Poems) Along with receiving numerous degree's, Du Bois wrote around 20 books, and over 100 articles for well known Newspapers. His most famous books were Biography of a Race and The Souls of Black Folks. He also became a legal citizen of Ghana, Africa, and was warmly welcomed by their president; President Kwame Nkrumah.
Books, Articles, and Quotes
Some of his famous quotes include:
-"One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth."
-"All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins."
-"I believe in pride of race and lineage and self - in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves."
-"Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor - all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked - who is good? Not that men are ignorant - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men."
-"Would America have been America without her Negro people?"
-"When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not how does he look, but what is his message?. . . The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty."
-"The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need - this life is hell."
-"One ever feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
-“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
-“A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.”
-“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
-“The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.”
-“But what of black women? . . . I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.”
-“It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.”
-“All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold.”
These are some famous excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk: The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach the Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows the Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to both be a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed, roughly in his face.
It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across color-line in this critical period of the Republican shall justice and right triumph.
Some of his most famous written works works include: These are only some of his most famous, and there are many more books and articles by the legendary Du Bois.
-The Philadelphia Negro (1896) -The Suppression of the African Slave Trade (Harvard Ph.D. thesis, 1896) -Atlanta University's Studies of the Negro Problem (1897–1910) -Souls of Black Folks (1903) -John Brown (1909) -Quest of the Silver Fleece ( 1911) -The Negro (1915) -Darkwater (1920) -The Gift of Black Folk (1924) -Dark Princess (1924) -Black Reconstruction (1935) -Black Folk, Then and Now (1939) -Dusk of Dawn (1940) -Color and Democracy (1945) -The Encyclopedia of the Negro (1931–1946) -The World and Africa (1946) -The Black Flame (a trilogy)
The Legend of W.E.B Du Bois
In a suburb of Accra, the capital of Ghana, was a small house surrounded by lush palm trees and vegetation. Inside that house was a vast number of books and articles. This is where Du Bois spent the last two years of his life. This house is now called the W.E.B Du Bois Memorial Center for Pan African Culture. W.E.B Du Bois died in his later years when he was a Ghanian citizen. Before moving to Africa, he was accused by the FBI of being a communist, but no proof was found against him. At age 62, his health was depleting immensely, and on August 27, 1963 he died at the age of ninety five. This date however, was very significant for in-fact, Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a Dream..." Speech. Although he died at the peek of the civil rights movement his legacy, and that of the NAACP's work will be remembered for years and years to come. He was buried in Ghana, at the Christianborg Castle. To this very day, their is a museum of his house and people come from all corners of the world to visit the museum and amazing house.
I had never heard of W.E.B Du Bois until we started doing this project. But the second I saw his name I thought he would
Timeline
February 23, 1868: Birth of W.E.B Du Bois.
1884: Graduates from High School.
1885-1887: Attends Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and works for school Newspaper.
1888: Receives BA.
1890: Graduates Harvard.
1892: Receives MA.
1895: Receives P.H.D in History.
1896: Publishes The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America.
1897: Works for University of Pennsylvania.
1900: Secretary to first Pan-African Conference.
1909: Founds NAACP.
1910: Works for Atlanta University.
1911: Joins the Socialist Party
1910-1934: Founder and editor of the Crisis.
1912: Resigns from Socialist Party, and helps organize black brake away from Republican party.
1918: Protests enrollment of black officers in army, and silent protest parade against lynching/Jim-Crow.
1927: Leads Harlem Renaissance with Alain Locke Found Black theater in Harlem.
1931: Becomes Co-Chairman of Council on African Affairs with Paul Robeson
1949: Helps organize Waldorf Conference.
1950: Helps lead campaign against Atomic Bomb.
1961: Joins Communist party, and head of editorial board to produce an Encyclopedia Africana in Ghana.
1963: Death of W.E.B Du Bois.
References & Vocabulary:
Photos contributed by Jill Johnson our lovely Aunt. Thank You very much.
Anthropological Segregation Communist
Kallen, Stuart. The Harlem Renaissance. Edina, MN: ABDO, 2001.
Giovanni`, Nikki. Harlem Stomp. New York, NY: Laban Carrick Hill, 2003.
<http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/dubois>
<http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566483/harlem_renaissance.html>
<http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html>
<http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0history/hwny-dubois.html>
