Du Bois, W. E. B.

(1868–1963)

African American Activist, Scholar

A leading American intellectual and civil rights advocate, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868. After undergraduate study at all-black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduate work at Harvard and the University of Berlin, Du Bois turned his attention to the academic study of American society and to the cause of social reform. He helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and served for 24 years as the editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis, an important platform for black America. During World War I, Du Bois challenged Pres. Woodrow Wilson to make good on his promise of winning the war for democracy by reversing the segregationist policies of his administration and extending full citizenship rights to African Americans. An internationalist in strategy and vision, Du Bois worked to illuminate the ties that bound American people of color to the larger world of foreign affairs.

Throughout World War I, Du Bois struggled to balance a pragmatic patriotism with his steadfast commitment to civil rights. As early as 1915, he had traced the roots of the war to the problem of the color line, citing European rivalry over African colonies as a primary cause of the conflict. He supported the war against Germany nonetheless, convinced that African Americans could use the war to secure equal rights at home. After the United States declared war on April 6, 1917, Du Bois predicted that service in the armed forces would help engage all African Americans in the civil rights movement while also demonstrating the high price they were willing to pay as American citizens.

Du Bois's most infamous war-time editorial, “Close Ranks” (published in The Crisis in July 1918), undercut the civil rights militancy he otherwise celebrated: in “Close Ranks,” Du Bois urged his fellow African Americans to forget their “special grievances” for the duration of the war and give themselves unreservedly over to the American effort. To many civil rights activists, the call diminished Du Bois's previous denunciations of war-time lynchings and race riots. Moreover, the editorial offered a disheartening addendum to his controversial support of a segregated Army camp for African American officers in Fort Des Moines, Iowa. The leading voice of the Progressive-era civil rights movement, Du Bois seemed to have forsaken the cause of integration.

W. E. B. Du Bois at work at the offices of The Crisis, for which he served as editor. (Getty Images)

His critics need not have worried. Despite his conciliatory tone in “Close Ranks,” Du Bois never ceased in his attempts to hold the Wilson administration accountable to its black constituency. In the months following the November 11, 1918 armistice, Du Bois published documents exposing white officers' systematic abuse and exploitation of African American soldiers and laboring [Page 234]battalions. Continuing his critique of colonialism in Africa as an obstacle to global security, he organized a Pan African Congress in early 1919 to coincide with the peace treaty negotiations in Paris. Four more such congresses were convened in the years between 1921 and 1945.

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