W.E.B. Du Bois: The Visionary Behind the Talented Tenth

Описание: W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was a pioneering African American scholar, writer, and civil rights leader whose ideas helped shape the struggle for racial equality in the United States. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he excelled academically, eventually becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois co-founded the NAACP and emerged as a powerful voice for justice, using his influential work The Crisis to challenge segregation, discrimination, and racial violence.

A champion of higher education, he introduced the concept of the “talented tenth,” arguing that the top ten percent of educated African Americans should guide the fight for equality. He often clashed with Booker T. Washington, insisting that Black Americans deserved immediate civil and political rights—not gradual acceptance.

Du Bois was also a central figure in Pan-Africanism, organizing international conferences to unite people of African descent worldwide. In his later years, disillusioned by American racism, he embraced socialism, joined the Communist Party, and relocated to Ghana to work on an encyclopedia of the African diaspora. He passed away in 1963, just one day before the iconic March on Washington—an event built on foundations he helped lay.