Du Bois, W E B

Du Bois, W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt)

(born Feb. 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Mass., U.S.—died Aug. 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana) U.S. sociologist and civil-rights leader. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. Two years later he accepted a professorship at Atlanta University, where he conducted empirical studies on the social situation of African Americans (1897–1910). He concluded that change could be attained only through agitation and protest, a view that clashed with that of Booker T. Washington. His famous book The Souls of Black Folk appeared in 1903. In 1905 Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the NAACP. In 1910 he left teaching to become the NAACP's director of research and editor of its magazine, Crisis (1910–34). He returned to Atlanta University in 1934 and devoted the next 10 years to teaching and scholarship. After a second research position with the NAACP (1944–48), he moved steadily leftward politically. In 1951 he was indicted as an unregistered agent of a foreign power (the Soviet Union); though a federal judge directed his acquittal, he was by then completely disillusioned with the U.S. In 1961 he joined the Communist Party, moved to Ghana, and renounced his U.S. citizenship.