W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois was born in western Massachusetts in 1868, the son of a barber and a domestic worker. He received an excellent local education and went on to earn his BA and PhD at Harvard, as well as to study with cutting-edge social scientists in Germany. By 1900, Du Bois had become a national civil rights leader and America’s leading black intellectual. Famous for his sociological and historical studies, including The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and edited the organization’s journal, The Crisis. Between 1900 and 1945, he helped organize Pan-African conferences in locations around the world. Toward the end of his life, Du Bois pursued this Pan-African ideal by moving to Ghana, the first modern African nation formed after the end of European colonialism. He died there in 1963. Special Collections and Archives, W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.