Heroes for a Better World

W.E.B. Du Bois
(1868-1963)

African-American Civil Rights Leader, Historian
Points of Light Foundation Extra Mile Honoree

birthdate: February 23
birthplace:
Great Barrington, Massachusetts

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was one of the most influential African American intellectual and civil rights leaders of the early 1900s. He has been called the "father of Pan-Africanism" which seeks to unite Africans and those of African descent around the world as part of a global African community united in the struggle for freedom. In 1909 he helped to found the NAACP - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , America's largest and oldest civil rights organization. Throughout the first half of the century, Du Bois expressed his views about freedom and equality for all as an author, lecturer and educator. Many ignored W.E.B. Du Bois as a radical, but as Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "history cannot ignore W.E.B. Du Bois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people. There were very few scholars who concerned themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense void. The degree to which he succeeded disclosed the great dimensions of the man." Disillusioned with racial injustice in America, at the age of 95 Du Bois became a citizen of Ghana. Ironically, he died the evening before the famous march on Washington in 1963. Actor and social activist, Ossie Davis, read an announcement of Du Bois' passing to the 250,000 people that gathered at the Washington Monument that next day at what was to be the turning point of the civil rights movement.


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