W.E.DUBOIS

Du Bois

February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an intellectual leader of the black community in America. In multiple roles as civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and editor. Biographer David Levering Lewis wrote,

"In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism—scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."

Du Bois graduated from Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D in History, making him Harvard's first African-American to earn a Ph.D. Later he became a professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. He became the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) in 1910, becoming founder and editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis.

Du Bois rose to national attention in his opposition of Booker T.Washington's ideas of accommodation with Jim Crow separation between whites and blacks and disenfranchisement of blacks, campaigning instead for increased political representation for blacks in order to guarantee civil rights, and the formation of a Black elite that would work for the progress of the African American race.

November 23, 1961

Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois

Joins Communist Party at 93

By PETER KIHSS

Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the nation's best-known Negro historians and sociologists, has joined the Communist party at the age of 93, the party announced yesterday.

The announcement came at a time when the party faced penalties of $10,000 a day for failing to register under the 1950 Internal-Security Act. The deadline was last Monday midnight.

If its officers do not register by Nov. 30 and members then fail to register by Dec. 20, each individual becomes liable to a similar fine and five years' imprisonment for each day of noncompliance.

A co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Dr. Du Bois long ago split with that organization. Since 1948 he has been associated with a number of left-wing causes.

Dr. Du Bois said he had concluded that "

"capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction."

"No universal selfishness can bring social good to all," he said. "Communism -- the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute -- this is the only way of human life.

"These aims are not crimes. They are practiced increasingly over the world. No nation can call itself free which does not allow its citizens to work for these ends