Gifted scholar, historian, sociologist and founder of the civil rights movement, Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is internationally renowned as one of the leading intellectuals of his time, and revered for his lifelong commitment to the freedom of all peoples. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington in 1868, “by a golden river in the shadow of two great hills,” into one of the founding families of the area. His fondness for the natural beauty of the Berkshire region is reflected throughout his writings as a deep understanding and respect for nature and ecology.
Du Bois demonstrated a keen intellect and developed a deep concern for the emancipation of Black citizens while still a teenager at Great Barrington High School. He began to write publicly on community news, particularly relating to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Society, as a local correspondent for the New York Globe at the age of fifteen.
He completed his bachelor’s degree at Harvard in 1890, and his masters in 1891. After two years at the University of Berlin, he returned again to Harvard, and in 1896 became the first Black person to receive a PhD there. His innovative, scientific approach to sociological research has earned him the title ‘Father of Social Science.’
In 1905, Du Bois was a founding member of the Niagara Movement, which led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. For twenty-five years, he served as editor of the NAACP Magazine, The Crisis.
Du Bois became an international figure by helping to spearhead the Pan-African movement, and in 1945 he served as an associate consultant to the American delegation at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco.
Persecuted as a radical in the latter years of his life, Du Bois eventually left the United States and took up citizenship in Ghana, (without renouncing U. S. citizenship), where he enthusiastically served as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Africana. He died there on August 27, 1963, the eve of the March on Washington.
Today, Du Bois’s boyhood homesite in the Berkshires is dedicated as a National Historic Landmark.
