W.E.B Du Bois

W.E.B Du Bois was the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist on behalf of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Booker T. Washington, he carried on a dialogue with the educator about segregation, political disfranchisement, and ways to improve African American life. He was labeled "The Father of Pan-Africanism."

Du Bois fought for political, educational, social, and economic equality and rights of all persons; specifically, he struggled to eliminate racial hatred and discrimination. By founding the NAACP

He fought for economic equality and rights of all persons. He was spirited devoted and scholarly dedicated to fight for equality. Du Bois was an attacker of injustice and a defender of freedom. He always opposed the view of lack of justice. Du Bois also fought for African Americans to be assimilated as equals into American society. He became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek letter fraternity established by African Americans and one that had a civil rights focus.

Du Bois also struggled to eliminate racial hatred and discrimination. He was a writer who wrote about racism and discrimination. In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote a book title “The Souls of Black Folks”. In it, he concluded that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men"

He believed that the key to breaking down racial barriers was for college-educated blacks to teach less fortunate blacks. He practiced what he preached. In 1895, after graduating from college, he became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. For over 10 years, he taught history and economics at Atlanta University.

Du Bois was invited to Ghana in 1961 by President Kwame Nkrumah to direct the encyclopedia Africana, a government production, and a long-held dream of his. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley Graha DuBois, became citizens of Ghana. Contrary to some opinions, he never renounced his US citizenship, even when denied a passport to travel to Ghana. Du Bois' health had declined in 1962, and on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of ninety-five, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. At the March on Washington, Roy Wilkins informed the hundreds of thousands of marchers and called for a moment of silence.