W.E.B. Dubois, Essay Example

W.E.B. Dubois, lived between the years February 23, 1868 and August 27, 1963 and he led a life of, according admirers, spirited devotion and scholarly dedication, attacking injustice and defending freedom. He was termed as “A harbinger of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism” and lived his later years in exile, Africa, where he died.

He spent his early years in the Great Barrington where there were very few black people in a population of about 5, 000 people. Cases if racism were high that made his personality to be mutates in one way or another and this haounted him throughout his life. In high school he became the local correspondent for the New York Globe in his effort to develop his people. He studied at the Fisk College after high school and then went on to Nashville Tennessee to further his studies. Here he faced the first hands on experience on the evils of racism and found a chance to finally to go to Harvard where he studies philosophy and history. He went on to the University of Berlin in Germany for his doctoral degree and his doctoral thesis “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America,” remains the authoritative work on that subject, and is the first volume in Harvard’s Historical Series.

The most appealing thing about Dubois was his “radical” approach to the things that he felt appeared to demean that African race. This is especially shown in his quest for knowledge that led to him having great contributions to history that most people thought would end with him but “history cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth” and the truth is what Dubois was after.  He told the truth when the ex-president of the fund to educate Negroes said that “they could not find one worthy to enough for advanced study abroad” he was also radical enough in his reaction and wrote directly to the ex-president and he received the scholarship. The truth was also revealed in his later life as he carried out his services in the different organizations he was in as well as his response to his fellow African-Americans who came up to fight for their people and seemed to compromise the sovereignty of their people. With his radical nature, he rose to national attention when he opposed Booker T’s ideas of social incorporation between blacks and whites, instead of having the blacks improve their “knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro into a higher civilization” as was held by Dubois. He is a man to be remembered` as one who was determined to improve the lives of his people by radically finding a solution to the problem of racism.

Works Cited

Hynes, G. C. A biographical sketch of W.E.B. Dubois. 2008, July 15. Google. Retrieved on July 15, 2008, from http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html.