W.E.

B
DU
BOIS
BORN: FEBRUARY 23 ,
1868
D I E D : A U G U ST 2 7 , 1 9 6 3
This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-SA.
Childhood
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great
Barrington, Massachusetts. W.E.B. Du Bois's mother was
a domestic worker and his father was a barber. His father
left the family when William was still very young. When
his mother died in 1884, Du Bois was 16 years and
penniless. Great Barrington is the largest town in
Southern Berkshires, which is one of natural beauty,
cultural wealth and historical firsts.
Famous

Du Bois was already well known as one of the foremost Black

intellectuals of his era. The first Black American to earn a PhD
from Harvard University, Du Bois published widely before
becoming NAACP's director of publicity and research and
starting the organization's official journal, The Crisis, in 1910.
Pitfall

Du Bois attacked Washington’s acceptance of racial segregation,

arguing that this only encouraged whites to deny African
Americans the right to vote and to undermine black pride and
progress. Du Bois also criticized Washington’s approach at the
Tuskegee Institute, a school for blacks that Washington founded,
as an attempt “to educate black boys and girls simply as servants
and underlings.”
Famous Quotes
• “We say easily, for instance, ‘The ignorant ought not to vote.’ We would say,
‘No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in
government,’ and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is
civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it.”
• “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back
again toward slavery.”
• “But what of Black women?… I most sincerely doubt if any other race of
women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.”
• “Beneath the Veil lay right and wrong, vengeance and love, and sometimes
throwing aside the veil, a soul of sweet Beauty and Truth stood revealed.”
Recognitions

• The NAACP awarded the Spingarn Medal to Du Bois in 1920. [353]

• In 1958, Du Bois was inducted into the Fisk University chapter of Phi Beta
Kappa when he returned to campus to receive an honorary degree. [354]
• In 1959, Du Bois was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by
the USSR.
• In 1969, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American
Research, now part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American
Research, was established at Harvard University.
Fun Facts
• HE WAS THE ONLY CHILD OF ALFRED DU BOIS AND MARY SILVINA
BURGHARDT
• HE WAS THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN TO EARN A PH.D. FROM
HARVARD
• HIS VISION OF EQUAL RIGHTS GAINED GROUND AFTER THE ATLANTA
RACE RIOT
• W.E.B. DU BOIS LEFT U.S. AND BECAME A CITIZEN OF GHANA
• HE DIED A DAY BEFORE THE FAMOUS “I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH
Reference
• Du Bois contributes to our specifically philosophical understanding of
race and the race problem, because he treats these themes as objects of
philosophical consideration—indeed, it is largely through an engagement
with Du Bois’s work that many contemporary philosophers have come to
appreciate race and race-related concerns as fruitful topics of
philosophical reflection. Through his work in social philosophy, political
philosophy, and the philosophy of art, Du Bois, for all intents and
purposes, invented the field of philosophy and race, thereby unsettling
and revising our views of the proper scope and aims of philosophical
inquiry.