Rashad Stafford

W.E.B. Dubois – An American Icon

W.E.B. Dubois, a Massachusetts born man that was greatly admired in his later years by

many of his peers for his big steps he took for the African American civil rights. After graduating

from Great Barrington High School he went to the University of Berlin finding out that he had a

great passion in African American history. He later attended Harvard University to broaden he

knowledge on the history of African Americans. In 1895, William Dubois became the first African

American to graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of Harvard. After his Ph.D. he started

teaching economics and history at the University Of Atlanta. In the early 1900’s, he published

his first ground breaking book The souls of Black Folks. This book contained many attacks on

the honorable Booker T. Washington. In Dubois eyes, Booker T. Washington was coward by

selling his race short by trying to tell them that they aren’t going to be a important figure in life,

so he told people that they should learn a trade to make themselves somewhat successful in

life. Dubois thought this was wrong! He thought, Washington should be telling them that they

should be trying to make something better with their life. Dubois was a newspaper editor for

The Crisis. In October, 1911, he wrote about the Jim Crow laws and in one article “every

argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women suffrage. Dubois kept on being the

editor of the crisis until 1934 when he became the chairman of the Sociology Department of the

University of Atlanta. He was active in the NAACP. Dubois was there representative at the San

Francisco Conference which founded the United Nations. Dubois wrote many books such as

The Philadelphia Negro, John Brown, Dusk of Dawn, Colour and Democracy. Dubois joined the

communist party in 1961 and at the age of 91 moved to Ghana where he became a naturalized

citizen. Dubois died in August 27 in 1967 and he was honored by a state funeral and buried.