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.
