Du Bois was strongly influenced by the new historical work of the German-trained Albert Bushnell Hart and the philosophical lectures of William James, both of whom became friends and professional mentors. Because of the expiration of the Slater Fund fellowship that supported his stay in Germany, Du Bois could not meet the residency requirements that would have enabled him formally to stand for the degree in economics, despite his completion of the required doctoral thesis on the history of southern U.
Returning to the United States in the summer of , Du Bois taught classics and modern languages for two years at Wilberforce University in Ohio. While there, he met Nina Gomer, a student at the college, whom he married in at her home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The couple had two children. In high school Du Bois came under the influence of and received mentorship from the principal, Frank Hosmer, who encouraged his extensive reading and solicited scholarship aid from local worthies that enabled Du Bois to enroll at Fisk University in September , six months after his mother's death.
One of the best of the southern colleges for newly freed slaves founded after the Civil War, Fisk offered a continuation of his classical education and the strong influence of teachers who were heirs to New England and Western Reserve Ohio abolitionism. It also offered the northern-reared Du Bois an introduction to southern American racism and African American culture. His later writings and thought were strongly marked, for example, by his experiences teaching school in the hills of eastern Tennessee during the summers of and Although he had written his Berlin thesis in economic history, received his Harvard doctorate in history, and taught languages and literature at Wilberforce, Du Bois made some of his most important early intellectual contributions to the emerging field of sociology.
In he was invited by the University of Pennsylvania to conduct a study of the Seventh Ward in Philadelphia. There, after an estimated hours of door-to-door interviews in 2, households, Du Bois completed the monumental study, The Philadelphia Negro The Philadelphia study was both highly empirical and hortatory, a combination that prefigured much of the politically engaged scholarship that Du Bois pursued in the years that followed and that reflected the two main strands of his intellectual engagement during this formative period: the scientific study of the so-called Negro Problem and the appropriate political responses to it.
During the following July and August he undertook for the U. Bureau of Labor the first of several studies of southern African American households, which was published as a bureau bulletin the following year under the title The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study.
Together these works frame Du Bois's evolving conceptualization of, methodological approach to, and political values and commitments regarding the problem of race in America. His conceptions were historical and global, his methodology empirical and intuitive, his values and commitments involving both mobilization of an elite vanguard to address the issues of racism and the conscious cultivation of the values to be drawn from African American folk culture.
After the completion of the Philadelphia study in December , Du Bois began the first of two long tenures at Atlanta University, where he taught sociology and directed empirical studies—modeled loosely on his Philadelphia and Farmville work—of the social and economic conditions and cultural and institutional lives of southern African Americans.
During this first tenure at Atlanta he also wrote two more books, The Souls of Black Folk , a collection of poignant essays on race, labor, and culture, and John Brown , an impassioned interpretation of the life and martyrdom of the militant abolitionist.
He also edited two short-lived magazines, Moon — and Horizon — , which represented his earliest efforts to establish journals of intellectual and political opinion for a black readership.
Washington's policy of political conservatism and racial accommodation. Ironically, Du Bois had kept a prudent distance from Washington's opponents and had made few overt statements in opposition to the so-called Wizard of Tuskegee. In fact, his career had involved a number of near-misses whereby he himself might have ended up teaching at Tuskegee. Having applied to Washington for a job shortly after returning from Berlin, he had to decline Tuskegee's superior monetary offer because he had already accepted a position at Wilberforce.
On a number of other occasions Washington—sometimes prodded by Albert Bushnell Hart—sought to recruit Du Bois to join him at Tuskegee, a courtship he continued at least until the summer of , when Du Bois taught summer school at Tuskegee.
Early in his career, moreover, Du Bois's views bore a superficial similarity to Washington's. Like many elite blacks at the time, Du Bois was not averse to some form of franchise restriction, so long as it was based on educational qualifications and applied equally to white and black. Du Bois had been charged with overseeing the African American Council's efforts to encourage black economic enterprise and worked with Washington's partisans in that effort.
By his own account his overt rupture with Washington was sparked by the growing evidence of a conspiracy, emanating from Tuskegee, to dictate speech and opinion in all of black America and to crush any opposition to Washington's leadership.
After the collapse of efforts to compromise their differences through a series of meetings in , Du Bois joined William Monroe Trotter and other Washington opponents to form the Niagara Movement, an organization militantly advocating full civil and political rights for African Americans.
Although it enjoyed some success in articulating an alternative vision of how black Americans should respond to the growing segregation and racial violence of the early twentieth century, the Niagara Movement was fatally hampered by lack of funds and the overt and covert opposition of Washington and his allies.
Indeed, the vision and program of the movement were fully realized only with the founding of a new biracial organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP. The NAACP grew out of the agitation and a conference called to protest the deteriorating status of and escalating violence against black Americans.
About the W. Du Bois Center. Our Mission. Who We Are. About the Du Bois Library. Events Calendar. In this collection of essays, Du Bois described the predicament of Black Americans as one of "double consciousness": "One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, who dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. Du Bois became the editor of the organization's monthly magazine, The Crisis , using his perch to draw attention to the still widespread practice of lynching, pushing for nationwide legislation that would outlaw the cruel extrajudicial killings.
A article in the journal gave a year-by-year list of more than 2, lynchings over the previous three decades. Du Bois, who considered himself a socialist, also published articles in favor of unionized labor, although he called out union leaders for barring Black membership. Du Bois served as editor of The Crisis until , when he resigned following a rift with NAACP leadership over his controversial stance on segregation. He viewed the "separate but equal" status as an acceptable position for Blacks.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Amiri Baraka is an African American poet, activist and scholar.
He was an influential Black nationalist and later became a Marxist. Until his assassination, he vigorously supported Black nationalism. Philip Randolph was a trailblazing leader, organizer and social activist who championed equitable labor rights for African American communities during the 20th century. Alain LeRoy Locke was a philosopher best known for his writing on and support of the Harlem Renaissance.
0コメント