Educator and Human Rights Activist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

During the American Gilded Age, W.E.B Du Bois, a civil rights activist, historian, and sociologist, was a significant figure in U.S history. He strongly advocated for the rights of blacks in post-civil war America primarily focusing on the importance of education, political rights, and social equality for African Americans. His accomplishments include becoming the first black to get a PhD at Harvard and co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Although there were many ground breaking progress for blacks, Du Bois heavily expressed his concern for black representation in the political system. In his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folks, Du Bois articulated the importance of representation for blacks stating,

The August 1897 issue of the Atlantic Monthly introduced Du Bois to a national audience when it published his article "The Striving of the Negro People”. He begins this article with what he calls “the unasked question” he continually encountered: “How does it feel to be a problem?” Meaning: how does it feel to be black in America after the end of the

Then, in 1896 he accepted a job at University of Pennsylvania conducting research on the Philadelphia slums. His studies led to his book, The Philadelphia Negro. This writing merely explained crime in black communities. He explained that blacks were not the cause of crime, just a symptom (Hynes, 12). Dubois had a deep analytical perspective for the black culture as a whole.

Du Bois contributed to Sociological Theory in several other works published, specifically The Philadelphia Negro. This work was one of the earliest sociological studies to analyze urban life and African Americans. He analyzed various issues in living conditions, education, work life, etc. of the black population living in Philadelphia, something never done before (Du Bois & Eaton, 1976). The goal of his work was to get to the root of the mass amount of difficulties that plagued African Americans in urban areas and pose solutions to improve their standing. From the study, he coined the term the Talented Tenth. The Talented Tenth was described as a need for the most educated and successful of African Americans to gain as much knowledge

W.E.B. Du Bois was a man with impressive accomplishments and achievements. He was the first ever African American to earn a PhD from Harvard University and he

life in the US since before he had gained entry into Fisk University, his first attended college.

Before one woman refused to head to the back of the bus, before there was a voice to peacefully express the dream, before Jim Crow was scared away, there were organizations, fighters and events that contributed to the advancement of African Americans. As W.E.B. Du Bois provided the diving board that would allow blacks to dive into the pool of equality, he is found at the origin of the Civil Rights Movement. The Pan-Africanism movement, the rage following the Red Summer, and the Great Migration continued the efforts of W.E.B. Du Bois. The bold and striking words and actions of Marcus Garvey showed whites that blacks would not be called an inferior race any longer. Following World War II, many bounds toward racial equality were

According to Matthew Mason’s academic journal “A Missed Opportunity? The Founding, Postcolonial Realities, And The Abolition Of Slavery,” African Americans have been enslaved in America since the early 17th century.” The first slaves were brought by the Dutch to the colony of Jamestown, Virginia to help harvest tobacco. The institution of slavery was practiced in America through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery helped to build the economic foundation of the United States. When the Emancipation Proclamation was passed by Abraham Lincoln in the year 1893 it changed the lives of over three million slaves who were reclassified as “slave” to “free.” Former slaves struggled to find their place within this new world of freedom which they had not yet known before. However, African Americans still faced problems such as discrimination, lack of opportunity, stereotyping, and mortality. Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois both confronted these issues. These two men advocated for the advancement of Black people within society, however in this essay I argue that Du Bois was more effective than Booker T. Washington because of his idea that African Americans should have the same possibility to achieve the same rights as any other race in the United States.

The year 1896 was the dawn of a new era for DuBois. With his doctorate degree and two undistinguished years at Wilberforce behind him, he readily accepted a special fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania to conduct a research project in Philadelphia's seventh ward slums. This responsibility afforded him the opportunity to study Blacks as a social system.

One of his works during this time period was a famous empirical sociological study, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). In the study, Du Bois examined the city's African American population and made recommendations on a number of things, including school reform. This study was dedicated to "combating the pseudo-science of racial bigots"(Franklin, 1990, p. 53). Du Bois stated that the "problem was in my mind a matter of systematic investigation and intelligent understanding. The world was thinking wrong about race, because it did not know. The ultimate evil was stupidity"(Du Bois, 1940, p. 58). Du Bois deeply believed in the power of basic research to reveal truth, such as natural laws that in turn would dictate a plan of action to overcome racial injustices. From this research he decided upon an action plan of "self help, duty and discipline, efficiency, thrift, interracial economic cooperation, and group pride" to help his race (Tuttle, 1973, p.

The same year the dissertation was published, Du Bois began to teach Latin, Greek, German, and English at Wilberforce University in Ohio. After teaching for several years, Du Bois conducted an exhaustive study of the social and economic conditions of urban blacks in Philadelphia in 1896 and 1897. The results were published in the Philadelphia Negro (1899). This was the first sociological text on a black community published in the United States.

African Americans during the 1900s lived lives full of uncertainty. They were no longer slaves, but still looked upon by many as inferior to the white race. However in this period of tension, there were men who sought to bring their race to new heights. One of these men was W.E.B Du Bois. Few have influenced the lives of African Americans in such a way as W.E.B Du Bois. The vision he had for African Americans was one that many found great hope in. He sought for the day that his race for finally have civil equality in every aspect of life.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a major sociologist historian, writer, editor, political activist, and cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During the Harlem renaissance and through his editorship of crisis magazine, he actively sought and presented the literary genius of black writers for the entire world to acknowledge and honor (Gale schools, 2004).

The black freedom struggle has not yet come to an end – there are still prejudiced and racist radicals that try to negotiate white supremacy and dominance in order to prevent the blacks from their long wait for equality. Consequently, the movement has progressed very sluggishly in the past few centuries. Nevertheless, the campaign for equal rights has led to the triumph over slavery and has led to the accrual of suffrage rights. However, this is still not enough, not after centuries of enslavement, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. Oftentimes, there is still no justice in court houses, especially when black people are accused and convicted, even for the simplest of crimes – as compared to the white and powerful who are charged for heinous misconducts and get away scratch free. Hence, throughout the period of the Blacks’ long fight for freedom and equality, several Black intellectuals have come front with ideas that could administer better treatment for their people. A good strategy to encourage the black populace to fight for their freedom and their rights is by inverting popular ideas so that there is a clear distinction between the reasonable and unreasonable notions of equality and justice. Thus, it was not uncommon for these literati to undermine dominant discourses in order to bolster their own analyses. Among the discussed black intellectuals who inverted prevailing dissertations, three that stood out the most are Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, and

In 1899, Du Bois published The Philadelphia Negro, a pioneering work of sociology. Du Bois interviewed as many as 5,000 people and sought to prove there were class distinctions within black society. He urged whites not to focus on intermarriage, but to concentrate on cooperating with the black aristocracy to provide