W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), an eminent scholar-activist, was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A graduate of Fisk and Harvard universities, he became a pioneer in the fields of sociology and black history. While a professor at Atlanta University he cofounded the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, and emerged as a leader in the Pan-African Movement. Du Bois left academia in 1910 to become the NAACP’s director of publicity and research, its only black officer at that time. He resigned in 1934, but later returned to the NAACP as director of special research from 1944 to 1948. An early socialist, in 1961 Du Bois joined the Communist Party, and, at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah, moved to Ghana, where he died August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), an eminent scholar-activist, was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A graduate of Fisk and Harvard universities, he became a pioneer in the fields of sociology and black history. While a professor at Atlanta University he cofounded the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, and emerged as a leader in the Pan-African Movement. Du Bois left academia in 1910 to become the NAACP’s director of publicity and research, its only black officer at that time. He resigned in 1934, but later returned to the NAACP as director of special research from 1944 to 1948. An early socialist, in 1961 Du Bois joined the Communist Party, and, at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah, moved to Ghana, where he died August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington.