W.E.B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Massachusetts in 1868.
He earned degrees from Fisk College, Harvard (BA, MS, and doctorate in history), and studied at the University of Berlin, becoming the first Black person to earn a Harvard doctorate.
Du Bois taught at Atlanta University and became a founder of the NAACP, editing their journal "Crisis" from 1910-1934, transforming it into the foremost Black literary publication.
Known as the "father of Pan-Africanism," he organized international Black congresses.
A self-described freethinker, Du Bois later joined the Communist Party and renounced his U.S. citizenship, dying in Ghana in 1963.
