Resource: The Crisis: A Weapon Against Jim Crow

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W.E.B. Du Bois was born during the term of President Andrew Johnson and died the year that Lyndon Johnson became president. Du Bois was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated in 1888 from Fisk University, a black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. During the summer, he taught in a rural school and later wrote about his experiences in his book The Souls of Black Folk.

In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in the subject of history from Harvard University. With the publication of The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study in 1899, the first case study of a black community in the United States, as well as papers on black farmers, businessmen, and black life in Southern communities, Du Bois established himself as the first great scholar of black life in America.

He taught sociology at Atlanta University between 1898 and 1910. Du Bois had hoped that social science could help eliminate segregation, but he eventually came to the conclusion that the only effective strategy against racism was agitation. He challenged the dominant ideology of black accommodation as preached and practiced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black man in America. Washington urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and elevate themselves through hard work and economic gain to win the respect of whites.

In 1903, in his famous book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois charged that Washington's strategy kept the black man down rather than freed him. This attack crystallized the opposition to Booker T. Washington among many black intellectuals, polarizing the leaders of the black community into two wings -- the "conservative" supporters of Washington and his "radical" critics. In 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the short-lived Niagara Movement, intended to be an organization advocating civil rights for blacks. Although the Niagara Movement faltered, it was the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909. Du Bois played a prominent role in the organization's creation and became its director of research and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis.

In 1951, when he was 83 years old, the federal government prosecuted Du Bois for his affiliation with the Communist Party. A judge eventually threw out the case. Disillusioned with the United States, he officially joined the Communist Party in 1961 and moved to Ghana; he renounced his American citizenship more than a year later.

--adapted from the website The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

Print Questions for Discussion

• What is The Crisis? Who was its editor?
• How did The Crisis promote the political and cultural interests of African Americans?
• Why did DuBois support Woodrow Wilson for President? What did DuBois tell him in the editorial in The Crisis?