WEB Du Bois. 5.04 Compare and contrast the African American political and legal personalities of the time period and their impact on American society.

WEB Du Bois

5.04 Compare and contrast the African American political and legal personalities of the time period and their impact on American society.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Born in Great Barrington Massachusetts on February 23, 1868

Later that year his father left town and never returned

Du Bois studied and worshipped with whites

He was the first African-American to graduate from his high school; he did so with high honors in 1884

His mother died in 1885

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Whites from Great Barrington churches paid for Du Bois’s schoolingHe wanted to attend Harvard but chose instead to attend Fisk, one of the top black colleges in the USIn the South Du Bois encountered violent racism and found himself with new understanding of black poverty and sufferingWrites on the economic basis of racism in rural Tennessee

Fisk University

Jubilee hall is the oldest building of higher education for African-Americans.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Graduated from Fisk in 1888, enrolled in HarvardReceived second bachelor’s and continued graduate study in historyWilliam James, George Santana, Albert Bushnell Hart, and Frank Taussig mentored Du Bois in philosophy, history, and economicsIn 1892 Du Bois traveled to Berlin to study sociology and economics at Fredrich Wilhelm University

19th Century Picture: African-Americans Voting

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Used immense intelligence to assault white supremacy upon return to HarvardDu Bois became the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in history from HarvardHis thesis was The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United StatesAfter a year of research in Philadelphia he writes The Philadelphia NegroBetween 1897 and 1903 has many essays published

Paris Exhibition

Du Bois displayed hundreds of pictures of black doctors, lawyers, and ‘normal folk.”

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Souls of Black Folk

1903 writes landmark at age 35In 1903 there were 8 million African-AmericansDescribes ‘veil’ separating black and white lifeDescribes ‘two-ness’ of being black yet AmericanMetaphor used by James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXE93piq0o4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQq-Gs_Fk4&feature=related

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Niagara Movement formed to ensure civil rightsFounds NAACP and publishes The CrisisThe Crisis was one part shared outrage at injustice and one part high black art and education Du Bois went to the Paris Peace Conference to champion the rights of Africans and African- Americans Du Bois traveled to the USSR to ‘look into’ socialism; many in the NAACP were outraged

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

A conflict with NAACP secretary Walter White leads to Du Bois’s resignation in 1934Attempts to complete The Encyclopedia of the Negro (later titled Encyclopedia Africana)Efforts increased to fight colonial imperialismCompletes Reconstruction in America, Black Folk: Then and Now, Dusk of Dawn, An Autobiography of a Concept of Race, Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, and The World and Africa

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Accepts Kwame Nkrumah’s invitation and moves to the African country of Ghana

The day before the March on Washington (1963) Du Bois dies at the age of 94

Martin Luther King Jr. takes over as the most influential black political leader in the world!

The Encyclopedia Africana was completed by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah in 1999

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Bibliography

Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919. N.Y. Henry Holt, 1993

_____. The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. N.Y Henry Holt, 2000.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Cornell West. The African-American Century, N.Y.

The Free Press, 2000.

Summertime performed by Miles Davis.

1. Who invited WEB DuBois to live in Ghana?

2. When did DuBois die?

3. Who helped Kwame Anthony Appiah complete the Encyclopedia Africana?

4. Why did DuBois resign the NAACP?

5. What DuBois’s landmark (published 1903)?

6. What metaphor does DuBois use to explain the separation between black and white life?

7. Where did DuBois get his first undergraduate degree? Ec. Concerning Harvard how does DuBois’s degree differ from BTW’s?