HPC Portrayals

W.E.B. DU BOIS (1868-1963)

by Charles Everett Pace

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’s ideas show how one man turned his vision for a more democratic America into a concrete reality. Du Bois used scholarship, activism and art to build an interracial coalition of leaders that mobilized the black public, transcended the obstacle of white supremacy, and advanced democracy in America.

As a scholar Du Bois worked alone and with an international group of black and white scholars to discredit any claims of a scientific basis backing white supremacy. Their ground-breaking published research gave compelling arguments that race was socially constructed and not genetically determined, as science then asserted. But the Atlanta, Georgia, white race riot in 1906 convinced Du Bois that scholarship must be empowered by public action in order to stop the terror. The lynching of 69 blacks in 1909 made the case that vision must be empowered by public action.

The 1908 Springfield, Illinois white race riot was the catalyst for political mobilization and Du Bois’s role as an activist. It confirmed that the terrorist campaign directed at Americans of African descent was not only Southern but national in scope. In response, a creative coalition of white New York liberals and a select group of black leaders founded The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Du Bois quickly emerged as the national personification of the Association. His vision moved tens of thousands who read The Crisis, NAACP’s monthly magazine that he founded and edited. NAACP victories came slowly, but surely, and most significantly through a series of victorious United States Supreme Court decisions including the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down the legal basis for white supremacy.

Du Bois’s role as an artist engaged him in both collaboration and conflict within his race. Two decades after his epic battle with Booker T. Washington, Du Bois locked horns with the young artists of the New Negro Arts Movement known as the Harlem Rennasissance. This 1920s flowering in music, theatre, dance, visual and plastic arts including photography, and especially literature, reflected a difference of concept more than of generation. Du Bois argued that if the arts were to self-consciously propagate the idea of a co-equal black humanity, then the power of the ideology of white supremacy would be weakened. Du Bois wrote The Dark Princess, his third novel, to illustrate his concept of black art. The “Young Turks,” however, opted for an “art for art’s sake” approach.

Yet, Du Bois took their vehement disagreement as a positive sign: diversity of voices represents democracy in action. The merit of the work itself, however, proved

most persuasive – an inferior people do not produce superior work. Thus, this third tool of his triumvirate of scholarship, activism, and art – touching the heart, as well as the mind – imaginatively made the case for our common humanity.

CHARLES EVERETT PACE

Charles Everett Pace was a program advisor for the Texas Union, University of Texas at Austin, and taught at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Purdue University, and Centre College of Kentucky. Pace graduated from Texarkana Community College, The University of Texas at Austin (B.A. biology) and Purdue University (M.A. American studies-history/anthropology). A 17-year veteran of the Great Plains Chautauqua, Pace and George Frein gave the keynote address at the final Presidential debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Pace has also conducted U.S. Government Public Diplomacy Missions in 25 cities and nine countries across Africa. He does Chautauqua presentations as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. This provides the background for his latest work in “Taking the Lead: Creative Leadership Training for Today's Students.” Charles Everett Pace is a full time Chautauquan, a Silver Life Member of the NAACP, travels nationally and lives in Texarkana, Texas. To learn more about Pace, go to www.charleseverettpace.com

W.E.B. DU BOIS

Harvard University chose W.E.B. Du Bois’s doctoral dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, for Volume One of its historical series.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington differed with each other over matters of politics and power rather than over the value of college vs. industrial education.

In 1900 W.E.B. Du Bois organized a series of international Pan-African Congresses that charted the course of African liberation more than a half century later.

QUOTES

[As a graduate student in Germany] “I began to feel that dichotomy which all my life has characterized my thought: how far can love for my oppressed race accord with love for the oppressive country? And when these loyalties diverge, where shall my soul find refuge?”

“Moreover, it must not be forgotten that this Tuskegee Machine (Booker T. Washington) was not solely the idea and activity of black folk at Tuskegee. It was largely encouraged and given financial aid through certain white groups and individuals in the North.”

“Most of my friends and helpers have been women. . . . My life . . . threw me widely with women with brains and great effort to work on the widest scale. I am endlessly grateful for these contacts.”

“The opposition to Negro education in the South was at first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro.”

“I was a lusty man with all normal appetites. I loved ‘Wine, Women and Song.’ I worked hard and slept soundly, and if, as many said, I was hard to know, it was that with all my belligerency I was in reality unreasonably shy.”

TIMELINE
1866	The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is established in Pulaski, Tennessee. The American Missionary Association establishes Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee for former slaves.
1880	While attending Great Barrington High School, Du Bois works as the western Massachusetts correspondent for New York Age, New York Globe, and the Springfield Republican.
1885	Enrolls at Fisk and serves as editor of the Fisk Herald, the college newspaper. His summer job, teaching in the school districts of rural Tennessee, exposes him to the reality of the Jim Crow laws and sparks in him an interest in civil rights.
1888	Receives his Bachelor of Arts degree
1890	Graduates with honors from Harvard in the spring and begins his graduate studies in American history at Harvard in the fall
1892	Receives a Slater Fund fellowship and travels to Germany to study at the University of Berlin for the next two years
1895	In a speech delivered in Atlanta, Georgia, Booker T. Washington urges blacks to place economic independence before social equality, a position that many black leaders, including Du Bois oppose. Harvard awards Du Bois a Ph.D., making him the first African American to earn the degree. Harvard University Press publishes his dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade.
1896	The U. S. Supreme Court rules in favor of “separate but equal” segregation laws in Plessy v. Ferguson. The National Association of Colored Women is established in Washington, D.C. Du Bois marries Nina Gomer and moves to Philadelphia to conduct sociological research at the University of Pennsylvania.
1897	Du Bois moves to Georgia to teach economics and history at Atlanta University.
1909	Du Bois’s John Brown is published. The 1908 lynching of two blacks in Springfield, Illinois leads to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Du Bois is appointed the NAACP’s director of publicity and research and the only black selected to the board of directors. He funds and edits The Crisis, the NAACP’s monthly journal, in which he criticizes segregation and gender inequality, stating the “very argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women’s suffrage.”
1935	Publishes Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880
1944	Returns to the NAACP as director of publicity and research
1961	Invited by Ghana’s President Nkrumah to move to Ghana and edit the Encyclopedia Africana; leaves the United States for good
1963	Becomes a citizen of Ghana. He dies on August 27 and is buried in Accra, Ghana. On August 28, on the evening of the march on Washington, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins leads a eulogy to Du Bois.
1964	The Civil Rights Act is passed to make voting easier for African Americans but is thwarted by the power of the states to impose registration restrictions.
1965	With much opposition from politicians in the South, the Voting Rights Act is passed, empowering the national government to override state-imposed limitations on the right of Africa Americans to vote.

RECOMMENDED READING

Du Bois,W.E.B. The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. International Publishers Co., Inc., 1968.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folks. Barns & Noble Classics, 2003 (original 1903).
Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race: 1868-1919. Henry Holt & Company, 1993.
Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. Henry Holt and Company, 2000.