America’s loss, Ghana’s gain

W.E.B. Du Bois

"The  problem with the 20th century is the problem of the color-line." W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk

William Edward Burghardt "W.E.B." Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, pan-Africanist, author and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After graduating from Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. He wrote dozens of books on African American culture and history.

He was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 1909. Although Du Bois generally endorsed socialist principles, his politics were strictly pragmatic. He was a lifelong antiwar activist, but his efforts became more pronounced after World War II. In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total. The U.S. government's anti-communist McCarthyism campaign targeted Du Bois because of his socialist leanings, and his visits to Russian and China further tarnished his image resulting in the revoking of his American passport. At age 93, he and his second wife, author Shirley Graham, settled in Ghana where Dubois became a close friend of President Nkrumah and where he wrote three volumes of a new encyclopedia of the African diaspora – the Encyclopedia Africana.

DuBois died on August 27, 1963, in Accra aged 95. He is buried near his home, which is now the Du Bois Memorial Center. The center has a collection of his books as well as hundreds of volumes he brought with him. The home is used as a conference center for Pan African causes. The day after his death, at the March on Washington, speaker Roy Wilkins asked the hundreds of thousands of marchers to honor Du Bois with a moment of silence. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, embodying many of the reforms Du Bois had campaigned for his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.