W. E. B. Du Bois 1868 – 1963
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, philosopher, historian, and civil rights leader. The first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, he produced pioneering empirical studies of Black life in the United States and articulated, in The Souls of Black Folk, the experience of double consciousness that would shape Black thought and Black studies for a century. He was a co-founder of the NAACP and an organizer of the Pan-African Congresses, and his later work turned to a global analysis of race, colonialism, and capitalism. He died in Ghana in 1963.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Pragmatism, Postcolonial Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”
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Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.”
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Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:
“Education must not simply teach work; it must teach life.”
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Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:
“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.”
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Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”