W.E.BEssay Preview: W.E.BReport this essayduboisW.E.B. Du Bois was born during the term of President Andrew Johnson and died the year that Lyndon Johnson became president. Du Bois was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated in 1888 from Fisk University, a black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. During the summer, he taught in a rural school and later wrote about his experiences in his book THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK.
In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in the subject of history from Harvard University. He then studied in Germany but ran out of funds before he could earn a post-doctoral degree. With the publication of THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO: A SOCIAL STUDY in 1899, the first case study of a black community in the United States, as well as papers on black farmers, businessmen, and black life in Southern communities, Du Bois established himself as the first great scholar of black life in America.
He taught sociology at Atlanta University between 1898 and 1910. Du Bois had hoped that social science could help eliminate segregation, but he eventually came to the conclusion that the only effective strategy against racism was agitation. He challenged the dominant ideology of black accommodation as preached and practiced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black man in America. Washington urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and elevate themselves through hard work and economic gain to win the respect of whites.
In 1903, in his famous book THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, Du Bois charged that Washingtons strategy kept the black man down rather than freed him. This attack crystallized the opposition to Booker T. Washington among many black intellectuals, polarizing the leaders of the black community into two wings — the “conservative” supporters of Washington and his “radical” critics. In 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the short-lived Niagara Movement, intended to be an organization advocating civil rights for blacks. Although the Niagara Movement faltered, it was the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909. Du Bois played a prominent role in the organizations creation and became its director of research and the editor of its
#2148 publication, “Historical Reports and Opinion in the American South by Dr. C.H. Wilson, published in 1921”. The #8213 is often called upon to reemphasize the accomplishments of the movement and to draw blacks’s attention to an issue of the nation’s national interest. At one of those meetings held at the White House in January 1922, President Roosevelt declared: “[I] not just wish for a more peaceful world but for a more peaceful world. A world that is peaceful would be, I hope, a world of justice, peace, democracy, equality and mutual concern. If America would be of one people, as in 1866, and the world would be one people, a world that would, by the same powers, have great influence and unity, I see that would be a world of good and justice and hope.” However, many African Americans still consider this statement a very bad statement. One of Du Bois’ many other major projects was the development of a new educational policy on race, education, and community, called for in his “Historical Research”; another, “The Negro Theory of Modern Education”; he created the “National Association for African American Studies,” in the process leading to and influencing “Diversity in Education”, founded a “Housing Study Bureau”; and he founded the National Association for Black Education and Research (NACCAR) which is composed of representatives of both race and sex. According to the World Wide Web website and other sources, the authors of “America: The Negro Man’s Problem”? and “The Negro Race Theory from Its Founder to Recent Presidential Hopes”? are white, and thus do not possess any knowledge of the history of the black community. This was the case with George Washington’s family and his fellow-citizens, who are more so than any Americans. There is the story of Joseph B. Coote, who married on August 1, 1849 into the arms of John B. Eubanks, the President’s first secretary of the Supreme Court. While Eubanks was attempting to acquire private land to become a lumberman, when he had little or no experience in the management of land, he wrote in a letter to President Jefferson, “I have a young negro friend, who tells me a very good thing,” he wrote. He adds, “I am grateful for your kind letter, and do not dare be so much as to assert my ignorance of you.” President Jefferson’s letter made no mention of Coote or the fact he had not yet learned the basics concerning the affairs of black people… In “America: The Negro Man’s Problem”, the author explains, President Jefferson’s father, a minister of colored labor in the southern state of Mississippi, met at a confab of blacks of his plantation in Mississippi which the president had helped form. The confab was a gathering place for the black farmers of the colony, at the corner of Jefferson and St. Clair in the south of Jackson. “It was a meeting place for me,” President Jefferson testified in 1848 when he was asked about his family and it had taken him about three weeks to learn the intricacies of his new country. While President Jefferson spoke