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American Civil Rights Activist: W. E. B. Du Bois

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William Edward Burghardt du Bois, better known as W.E.B du Bois was a American civil rights activist, a scholar, and a Pan-Africanist. He was one of the most important black protest leaders in the U.S during the first half century. W.E.B du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, MA. he community in which he lived included a population of approximately 5,000 whites and about 50 black people. He identified himself as a “mulatto ” half white - half black. While growing up, he freely attended school with whites and was supported by his white teachers. In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. In the following three years he witnessed discrimination and became more determined to quicken social justice …show more content…

In 1906, Du Bois took the lead in founding the Niagara Movement, with twenty-nine African-American leaders from 14 states united. The Niagara Movement was a black civil rights organization dedicated to attacking the platform of Booker T. Washington. This group later became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), possibly the most influential civil rights group in American history. Du Bois played a important role in the creation of the NAACP and became the association’s director of research and editor of it’s magazine, The Crisis. The Crisis magazine, governed by DuBois as its editor-in-chief for 25 years, was the main piece of the NAACP policies and news concerning blacks. The articles were often written without approval by the whites among the NAACP leadership, whose presence DuBois highly disapproved of, sometimes creating problems within the association. The NAACP or National Advancement for colored people was America’s oldest civil rights …show more content…

In 1921, he decided to hold another Pan-African meeting, where he had an encounter with Marcus Garvey. He and Du Bois had different way of advocating Pan-Africanism. So, DuBois set out to prove that Garvey was too much an idealist, and that his methods were wasteful and close to illegal. DuBois held his Pan-African conference in 1923, but the turnout was small. When the conference concluded, DuBois decided to sail to Africa for the first

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