A Tireless Explorer of Social Truths

A Tireless Explorer of Social Truths. W.E.B. Du Bois National Historic Site. , ”History cannot ignore W.E.B. Du Bois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. Du Bois was a tireless explorer… of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people.” , , Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., February 23, 1968 , W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, three years after the Civil War ended slavery in America. An outstanding student, Du Bois studied at Fisk University in Tennessee and Humboldt University in Berlin, and became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. As a professor and writer, Du Bois produced a torrent of scholarship that revolutionized the study of American history and culture by putting African Americans at its center. James Weldon Johnson declared the impact of Du Bois' most famous book, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), was "greater upon and within the Negro race than any other single book published in this country since Uncle Tom's Cabin." , Starting in 1905, Du Bois helped to organize annual meetings, known as the Niagara Movement, which led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Du Bois edited its monthly magazine, The Crisis, between 1910 and 1934. A prolific writer and organizer, he campaigned tirelessly for an end to racial discrimination in America and the start of self-determination for the peoples of Africa. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, at age 95, on the eve of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Announcing Du Bois' passing to the 250,000 gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins observed "his was the voice that was calling you here today." , "We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America. The battle we wage is not for ourselves alone but for all true Americans." , , W.E.B. Du Bois, "Address to the Nation," delivered at the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, August 16, 1906 , ”Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for woman suffrage; every argument for women suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage; both are great movements in democracy.” , , W.E.B. Du Bois, The Crisis, April 1915 , ”Would America have been America without her Negro people?” , , W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903