W. E. B. DuBois #1516
$ 8.00
Caption from poster__
“Education is that whole system of
human training within and without
the school house walls, which
molds and develops men.”
W. E. B. DuBois
W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) Dubois was born on February 23,
1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was one of the most
influential black leaders of the first half of the 20th Century. Dubois
shared in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, or NAACP, in 1909. He served as its director of
research and editor of its magazine, "Crisis," until 1934. Dubois was
the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University
in 1896. Between 1897 and 1914 Dubois conducted numerous studies
of black society in America, publishing 16 research papers. He began
his investigations believing that social science could provide answers
to race problems. Gradually he concluded that in a climate of virulent
racism, social change could only be accomplished by agitation and protest.
At the turn of the century Dubois had been a supporter of black capitalism.
Throughout his career he moved steadily to the political left. By 1905
he had been drawn to socialist ideas and remained sympathetic to
Marxism throughout his life. Dubois acted in support of integration
and equal rights for everyone regardless of race, but his thinking often
exhibited a degree of black separatist-nationalist tendencies. In 1961
Dubois became completely disillusioned with the United States. He
moved to Ghana, joined the Communist Party, and a year later renounced
his American Citizenship August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March On
Washington, Dubois died in Accra, Ghana, shortly after becoming a
Ghanan citizen.
