The private right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. This protection became legally explicit when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) that the Amendment defined and protected an individual right, unconnected with militia service. A subsequent holding in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) ruled that the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and thereby applies to state and local laws. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022) the Court struck down New York's may-issue
policy of being required to show "proper cause" to be granted a
concealed carry license, but allowed states to enforce "shall-issue"
permitting where applicants must satisfy certain objective criteria such
as passing a background check.
It also held that any regulation of firearms in the United States is
presumed unconstitutional unless the state can prove it is rooted in the
country's text, history, and tradition. In United States v. Rahimi
(2024), this test was refined as the Court upheld federal laws
restricting gun rights from those accused of domestic violence and said
that lower courts should not seek exact comparisons when reviewing the
historical tradition but rather look at similar analogues and general
principles.
Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA): Requires that gun manufacturers, importers, and those in the business of selling firearms have a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Prohibits the transfer of firearms to certain classes of people, such as convicted felons.
Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA): Focuses primarily on regulating interstate commerce in firearms by generally prohibiting interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers.
Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) (1986): Revised and partially repealed the Gun Control Act of 1968. Prohibited the sale to civilians of automatic firearms manufactured after the date of the law's passage. Required ATF approval of transfers of automatic firearms.
Undetectable Firearms Act
(1988): Effectively criminalizes, with a few exceptions, the
manufacture, importation, sale, shipment, delivery, possession,
transfer, or receipt of firearms with less than 3.7 oz of metal content.
Gun-Free School Zones Act
(1990): Prohibits unauthorized individuals from knowingly possessing a
firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to
believe, is a school zone.
Fugitives, those convicted of a felony
with a sentence exceeding one year, past or present, and those who were
involuntarily admitted to a mental facility are prohibited from
purchasing a firearm; unless rights restored. Forty-five states have a
provision in their state constitutions similar to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects the right to keep and bear arms.
The exceptions are California, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New
York. In New York, however, the statutory civil rights laws contain a
provision virtually identical to the Second Amendment.Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court held in McDonald v. Chicago
(2010) that the protections of the Second Amendment to keep and bear
arms for self-defense in one's home apply against state governments and
their political subdivisions. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen,
the Supreme Court ruled that states could not require "proper cause" or
a "special need" when issuing a license for concealed carry.
In 1934, the National Firearms Act (NFA) was signed into law under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Administration in an effort to curb prohibition-era violence. Between 1920 and 1933 the homicide rate in the United States had been rising year-over-year as an example of the unintended consequences of passing Prohibition into law, and the concomitant violence associated with making illegal a widely in-demand product. The NFA is considered to be the first federal legislation to enforce gun control in the United States, imposing a $200 tax, equivalent to approximately $3,942 in 2022, on the manufacture and transfer of Title II weapons. It also mandated the registration of machine guns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, heavy weapons, explosive ordnance, suppressors, and disguised or improvised firearms.
When Prohibition was ultimately repealed in 1933, and the monopoly on
alcohol maintained by organized crime was ended, there was a significant
decline in the homicide rate. In fact, "...homicides continued to diminish each year for eleven years straight [after the repeal of Prohibition]."
In 1939, through the court case United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Congress could regulate interstate selling sawed-off shotguns
through the National Firearms Act of 1934, deeming that such a weapon
has no reasonable relationship with the efficiency of a well-regulated
militia.
In 1968, following the spree of political assassinations including: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, President Lyndon B. Johnson, pushed Congress for the Gun Control Act of 1968
(GCA). It repealed and replaced the FFA, regulated “destructive
devices” (such as bombs, mines, grenades, and other explosives),
expanded the definition of machine gun,
required the serialization of manufactured or imported guns, banned
importing military-style weapons, and imposed a 21 age minimum on the
purchasing of handguns from FFLs. The GCA also prohibited the selling of
firearms to felons and the mentally ill.
In 1986, contrary to prior gun legislation, the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) (1986), passed under the Ronald Reagan administration,
enacted protections for gun owners. It prohibited a national registry
of dealer records, limited ATF inspections to conduct annual inspections
(unless multiple infractions have been observed), allowed licensed
dealers to sell firearms at "gun shows" in their state, and loosened
regulations on the sale and transfer of ammunition. However, the FOPA
also prohibited civilian ownership or transfer of machine guns made
after May 19, 1986, and redefined "silencer" to include silencer parts.
History of concealed carry lawsAfter the 2004 expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, the firearms industry embraced the AR-15's political and cultural significance for marketing. Almost every major gunmaker produces its own version, with ~16 million Americans owning at least one.
In 2003, the Tiahrt Amendment proposed by Kansas Representative, Todd Tiahrt,
limited the ATF to only release information from its firearms trace
database to only law enforcement agencies or a prosecutors in connection
with a criminal investigation.
In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in the case District of Columbia v. Heller
that the Second Amendment is an "individual right to possess a firearm
unconnected with service in a militia" and struck down Washington D.C.'s
handgun ban. But the Supreme Court also stated "that the right to bear
arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to
be regulated."
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in the case McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment is incorporated and thus applies against the states.
In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Caetano v. Massachusetts that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding".
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen
"that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s
right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home" and that
"the State’s may-issue licensing regime violates the Constitution."
An individual right to own a gun for personal use was affirmed in Heller, which overturned a handgun ban in the federal District of Columbia. In the Heller
decision, the court's majority opinion said that the Second Amendment
protects "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in
defense of hearth and home."
However, in delivering the majority opinion, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote on the Second Amendment not being an unlimited right:
Like most rights, the Second
Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry
any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose:
For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the
Amendment or state analogues. The Court's opinion should not be taken to
cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms
by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of
firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,
or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of
arms.
The four dissenting justices argued that the majority had broken prior precedent on the Second Amendment, and took the position that the amendment refers to an individual right, but only in the context of militia service.
In McDonald, the Supreme Court ruled that, because of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, the guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws and not just federal laws.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry guns in public for self-defense in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in 2022. Previously, federal appeals courts had issued conflicting rulings on this point. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
ruled in 2012 that it does, saying, "The Supreme Court has decided that
the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is
as important outside the home as inside." However, the Tenth Circuit Court
ruled in 2013 that it does not, saying, "In light of our nation's
extensive practice of restricting citizen's freedom to carry firearms in
a concealed manner, we hold that this activity does not fall within the
scope of the Second Amendment's protections." More recently, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in its 2016 decision Peruta v. San Diego County that the Second Amendment does not guarantee the right of gun owners to carry concealed firearms in public.
Eligible people
Household firearm ownership rate by U.S. state in 2016
U.S. gun sales have risen in the 21st century, peaking in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. "NICS" is the FBI's National Instant Background Check System.
The following are eligible to possess and own firearms within the United States, though further restrictions apply:
Aliens (or foreign nationals) who have been lawfully admitted to the United States under nonimmigrant visas but only if they fall under one of the following exceptions:
admitted into the United States for lawful hunting or sporting purposes
possesses a lawful hunting license or permit issued by any US state
an official representative of a foreign government who is accredited
to the United States Government or the Government's mission to an
international organization having its headquarters in the United States
or is en route to or from another country to which that alien is
accredited
an official of a foreign government or a distinguished foreign visitor who has been so designated by the Department of State
a foreign law enforcement officer of a friendly foreign government
entering the United States on official law enforcement business
has received a waiver from the United States Attorney General,
as long as the waiver petition shows this would be in the interests of
justice and would not jeopardize the public safety under 18 U.S. Code §
922(y)(3)(c)
non-resident of any US state unless the receipt of firearms are for lawful sporting purposes
Each state has its own laws regarding who is allowed to own or
possess firearms, and there are various state and federal permitting and
background check requirements. Controversy continues over which classes
of people, such as convicted felons, people with severe or violent
mental illness, and people on the federal no-fly list, should be excluded. Laws in these areas vary considerably, and enforcement is in flux.
Prohibited persons
The Gun Control Act of 1968
prohibits certain classes of people from buying, selling, using,
owning, receiving, shipping, carrying, possessing or exchanging any
firearm or ammunition. Those prohibited include any individual who:
is subject to a court order (including Domestic Violence Protective Orders as per USC Title 18§ 922(G)(8)) restraining the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of the intimate partner; or
These categories are listed on ATFForm 4473 – Firearms Transaction Record background check form. According to the US Sentencing Commission, approximately 5,000 to 6,000 prohibited persons are convicted of unlawfully receiving or possessing a firearm each year. In 2017, over 25.2 million background checks were performed.
Manufacturers
Under United States law, any company or gunsmith
which in the course of its business manufactures firearms of finished
frames and receivers, or modifies firearms for resale, must be licensed as a manufacturer of firearms. These regulations do not apply to manufacturers of kit components and non-firearms like so-called "80% receivers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-escalation De-escalation refers to the methods and actions taken to decrease the severity of a conflict, whether of physical, verbal or other nature. It is the opposite of escalation. De-escalation may also refer to approaches in conflict resolution, by which specific measures are taken to avoid behaviors that escalate conflict. De-escalation can be modeled with game theory.
Psychology
Verbal de-escalation in psychiatric settings
In psychiatric
settings, de-escalation is aimed at calmly communicating with an
agitated client in order to understand, manage, and resolve their
concerns. Ultimately, these actions are intended to reduce the client's
agitation and potential for future aggression or violence. An insufficient or overdue intervention may leave staff needing to use coercive measures to manage an aggressive or violent client. Coercive measures, such as chemical or mechanical restraints, or seclusion, are damaging to the therapeutic relationship and harmful to clients and staff.
As of 2016, there are 19 articles in literature that define or provide a model of de-escalation.
Articles converge on a number of themes (i.e. de-escalation should
involve safely, calmly, and empathetically supporting the client with
their concerns).
Hankin et al.’s (2011) review of four de-escalation studies
reflected the somewhat unclear state of de-escalation research. Their
review settled on eight goals, seven elements, 15 general techniques,
and 15 other techniques divided into three subheadings.
Price & Baker (2012) identified seven themes across relevant
papers: three related to staff skills (e.g. empathetic concern, calm
appearance and gentle tone of voice) and four related to the process of
intervention (e.g. establishing rapport, maintaining safety, problem
solving and setting limits).
The available literature provides clinical descriptions of effective de-escalation based on qualitative data
and professional observations. However, these thematic analyses need to
be supported by more objective data; one hallmark of such objectivity
would be an empirical scale or quantitative measure of de-escalation.
De-Escalating Aggressive Behaviour Scale (DABS)
An
English modified version of the De-Escalating Aggressive Behaviour
Scale (DABS) identifies seven qualities necessary for de-escalation:
Valuing the client: Provides genuine acknowledgement that the
client's concerns are valid, important and will be addressed in a
meaningful way.
Reducing fear: Listens actively to the client and offers genuine empathy while suggesting that the client's situation has the potential for positive future change.
Inquiring about client's queries and anxiety: Can communicate a thorough understanding of the client's concerns, and works to uncover the root of the issue.
Providing guidance to the client: Suggests multiple ways to help the client with their current concerns and recommends preventive measures.
Working out possible agreements: Takes responsibility for the
client's care and concludes the encounter with an agreed-upon short-term
solution and a long-term action plan.
Remaining calm: Maintains a calm tone of voice and steady pace that is appropriate to the client's feelings and behaviour.
Risk taking: Maintains a moderate distance from the client to ensure safety, but does not appear guarded and fearful.
The FIRST STEP Actprison reform bill, passed under the Trump administration,
mandates de-escalation training, especially for "incidents that involve
the unique needs of individuals who have a mental illness or cognitive
deficit."
Need for de-escalation practices in law enforcement
Richards (2007) states that de-escalation is the act of moving from a state of high tension to a state of reduced tension. Bell (2018) points out that the reason there is heightened tension in law enforcement today than ever before is due to technology. Media reports on the use of force, racial unrest, riots and injustice make it seem like conflicts between police and citizens are happening every day. Bell
notes that because people can so readily view these conflicts between
police and citizens through technology, people have become resistant to
or challenging of law enforcement. In response, the police have had to become engaged in social media, ethics training, diversity training and de-escalation programs.
Bell notes that police are different from average citizens. He states that citizens have a “duty to retreat" while trained officers are expected to pursue and make arrests
if need be. Sometimes officers have some discretion in how they will
handle a situation such as when an encounter has the potential to become
violent. It is at these times that “officers can turn to de-escalation
tactics and still complete their mission to protect and serve.” Oliva et al. note, “As the role of police officers continues to expand from exclusively crime fighting to encompass other service-oriented functions, they must be able to recognize the characteristics of individuals in crisis
in order to provide an effective and helpful resolution to the
situation while reducing liability and risk of injury” (p. 16.) Hence
the need for de-escalation tactics on the part of law enforcement
officers.
Types of de-escalation practices
De-escalation
tactics predominantly revolved around securing the scene at hand and
attempting to calmly communicate with the citizen involved. Andrew Bell
describes several de-escalation practices to assist in a potentially
violent situation:
The Tactical Pause entails stepping back, pausing to allow
everyone involved a brief moment to think, perhaps ending or limiting a fight-or-flight response.
The Just-Be-Nice Tactic where the police officer speaks and gives commands in a friendly tone
regardless of how the citizen is conducting themselves. Bell notes that
there are occasions when the situation is not, in fact, what it appears
to be, and the citizen is not committing a crime or violation. The
Just-Be-Nice Tactic is particularly helpful in such cases.
Be Aware, Understand, then React. Police need to avoid getting caught up in the moment so should take a moment to be aware, assess and understand what is going on around them before they react.
Oliva et al. suggest the following basic de-escalation
techniques: securing the scene, remove distractions or disruptive people
from the area. Further, "The officer should remain calm and speak
slowly, in short sentences, to encourage communication. The responding
officer should also present a genuine willingness to understand and
help". Oliva et al. go on to outline the following specific de-escalation techniques:
Effective Communication so that the officer and individual can understand each other.
Active Listening
Skills such as reflecting statements like "I understand that makes you
angry". Use of minimal encouragers-brief responses, like saying
'OK,' that let the person know the officer is listening. Introducing
oneself using "I" statements restating statements the individual says
mirroring/reflecting or summarizing/paraphrasing.
Oliva et al. also note behaviors that officers should avoid
when attempting to de-escalate a situation which include: Not asking
“why” questions as it makes the person defensive,
they shouldn’t rush the person, never speak too loudly, they should
keep their feelings from interfering, they shouldn’t challenge a person
if they are having delusions or hallucinations but neither should they agree they are real.
Memphis Model
One of the most prominent de-escalation programs was developed by The MemphisCrisis Intervention Team or CIT. This program, which has come to be known as the Memphis Model, provides law enforcement with crisis intervention training to particularly help those with mental illness.
This program is aimed at diverting those in a mental health crisis from
ending up in jail. The goal of the program is to improve the safety of
officers, family members and people in the community and to direct
people with mental illness away from the judicial system and into the healthcare system.
Through this program, officers are given 40 hours of comprehensive
training that includes de-escalation techniques. Officers engage in role-playing various scenarios as part of this program.
According to The Memphis Crisis Intervention Team, research on
the efficacy of CIT shows that it helps officers feel more confident,
increases jail diversion for those with mental illness, increases the
likelihood that those with mental illness get treatment, and injury to
officers is significantly reduced.
Compton et al. (2008) conducted a comprehensive review of the existing
research on the effectiveness of the Memphis Model of the Crisis
Intervention Team.
While research is limited, the authors note that there is preliminary
support that the Memphis Model may be helpful in connecting those with
mental illness to the psychiatric
services that they need. The authors further note that police officers
knowledge and confidence improve with such training. Arrest rates also
appear to be lower by officers trained in the CIT model.
According to PBS,
the Memphis Model has expanded to approximately 3,000 law enforcement
agencies across the United States. However, there are shortcomings to
the research done on the effectiveness of the CIT programs such as lack
of control groups and small sample sizes.
The CIT programs around the country seem limited to addressing
instituting de-escalation interventions with the mentally ill and not
with the broader range of offenders that law enforcement officers may
encounter. Furthermore, not all officers are trained in CIT; only
self-selected police officers participate in this specialized training.
Apex Officer
There
are other training programs, most notably the Apex Officer's Virtual
Reality Training that addresses other de-escalation situations and is
not limited just to work with the mentally ill.
This training follows many of the basic de-escalation approaches noted
above (e.g. effective communication and assessment of the scene) but is
done through a virtual reality simulator. This model was introduced to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) at their 126th Annual Conference and Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in October 2019.
International relations
In the military, de-escalation is a way to prevent military conflict escalation. A historic example is the teaching harvested from the Proud Prophet war simulation of a conflict between the USA and the USSR, which took place in 1983. In war-time diplomacy, de-escalation is used as an exit strategy,
sometimes called an "off-ramp" or "slip road". In such cases, an
alternative peaceful resolution is offered to a belligerent (i.e. nation
or person engaged in war or conflict) in order to avoid further
bloodshed. Restraint or appeasement against interventionism can in some cases lead to escalation instead of de-escalation. Deterrence is one strategy to decrease conflict severity. In asymmetric conflicts a probabilistic escalation might be rational for one side in some situations, resulting in challenges for de-escalation.
Watercolor painting of James Forten (1766–1842) of Philadelphia, a sailmaker by profession and one of the African American founding fathers of the United States
The African American founding fathers of the United States are the African Americans who worked to include the equality of all races as a fundamental principle of the United States. Beginning in the abolition movement
of the 19th century, they worked for the abolition of slavery, and also
for the abolition of second class status for free blacks. Their goals
were temporarily realized in the late 1860s, with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution. However, after Reconstruction ended in 1877, the gains were partly lost and an era of Jim Crow gave blacks reduced social, economic and political status. The recovery was achieved in the Civil Rights Movement, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, under the leadership of blacks, such as Martin Luther King and James Bevel,
as well as whites that included Supreme Court justices and Presidents.
In the 21st century scholars have studied the African American founding
fathers in depth.
As the Civil War was ending, the major issues facing President Abraham Lincoln
were the status of the ex-slaves (called "Freedmen"), the loyalty and
civil rights of ex-rebels, the status of the 11 ex-Confederate states,
the powers of the federal government needed to prevent a future civil
war, and the question of whether Congress or the President would make
the major decisions.
The severe threats of starvation and displacement of the
unemployed, unhoused freedmen were met by the first major federal relief
agency, the Freedmen's Bureau, operated by the Army.
Of more immediate usefulness than the constitutional amendments,
were laws passed by Congress to allow the federal government, through
the new Justice Department and through the federal courts to enforce the
new civil rights Even if the state governments ignored the problem.
These included the Enforcement Acts of 1870–71 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
Ex-Confederates remained in control of most Southern states for more than two years, but that changed when the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. President Andrew Johnson,
who sought easy terms for reunions with ex-rebels, was virtually
powerless; he escaped by one vote removal through impeachment. Congress
enfranchised black men and temporarily suspended many ex-Confederate
leaders of the right to hold office. New Republican governments came to
power based on a coalition of Freedmen together with Carpetbaggers (new arrivals from the North), and Scalawags
(native white Southerners). They were backed by the US Army. Opponents
said they were corrupt and violated the rights of whites. The
Republicans were in control of Southern state governments but they were
deeply factionalized. The white Republicans split between the more
radical "carpetbaggers" (new arrivals from the North), and the more
moderate "scalawags" (native whites who had opposed the Confederacy).
Meanwhile, the black Republicans were split between the more radical
ex-slaves, and the more moderate ex-free blacks. State by state the
multiple Republican factions battled verbally and sometimes physically,
in the face of the better organized white coalition of "conservatives"
(ex-Whigs) and Democrats.
In the 1870s state by state Republicans lost power to the
conservative-Democratic coalition, which gained control by violence of
the entire South by 1877. In response to Radical Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) emerged in 1867 as a white-supremacist organization opposed to
black civil rights and Republican rule. President Ulysses Grant's
vigorous enforcement of the Ku Klux Klan Act
of 1870 shut down the Klan, and it disbanded. But from 1868 onward in
much of the South violence suppressed black voting and threatened black
leaders. Rifle clubs had thousands of members. Although the KKK was
suppressed, by 1874, paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red Shirts disrupt the Republicans. Rable described them as the "military arm of the Democratic Party."
Reconstruction ended after the disputed 1876 election between Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden.
With a compromise Hayes won the White House, the federal government
withdrew its troops from the South, abandoning the freedmen to white
conservative Democrats, who regained power in state governments.
Reconstruction as Second Founding of the United States
The Founding, Reconstruction (often called “the second founding”), and
the New Deal are typically heralded as the most significant turning
points in the country’s history, with many observers seeing each of
these as political triumphs through which the United States has come to
more closely realize its liberal ideals of liberty and equality.
Scholars such as Eric Foner have recently expanded the theme into full-length books.Black abolitionists played a key role by stressing that freed blacks needed equal rights after slavery was abolished. Constitutional provision for racial equality for free blacks was enacted by a Congress led by Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Lyman Trumbull.
The "second founding" comprised the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to
the Constitution. All citizens now had federal rights that could be
enforced in federal court.
The Liberator (1831–1865) was the hard-hitting highly influential abolitionist newspaper run by William Lloyd Garrison,
a white man based in Boston. Of the 4000 weekly subscribers, about 3000
were blacks. Garrison denounced the United States Constitution as
hopelessly pro slavery, and discouraged political activism as a result.
Frederick Douglass at first followed Garrison, but broke with him in
1851, and promoted political action among free blacks in the North.
American Anti-Slavery Society
The interacial American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was formed in 1833, and grew rapidly to at least 100,000 members by 1840.
The all-black National Equal Rights League was founded in upstate New York in 1864 and had chapters across the North.
Union League
The Union League
was originally a network of elite local clubs in the North, founded in
1862 to support the Union war effort. After 1867 it included biracial
local organizations across the South to promote racial equality and
support the Republican Party. During Reconstruction the great majority
of Southern blacks joined a local unit.
A totally separate organization from the NAACP, the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) was set up by Thurgood Marshall in
1940; it became fully independent of the NAACP in 1957. While NAACP is a
membership organization with chapters across the country, LDF is a law
firm in New York City that focuses on civil rights lawsuits. It has
handled many major cases, with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 the most famous. In Brown the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment. Jack Greenberg (1924–2016) succeeded Thurgood Marshall as the Director-Counsel of the LDF from 1961 to 1984.
Bishop Richard Allen (1760–1831) was the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,
the largest of the nation's all-black organizations. Elected the first
bishop of the AME Church in 1816, Allen focused on organizing a
denomination in which free Black people could worship without racial
oppression and enslaved people could find a measure of dignity. He
worked to upgrade the social status of the Black community, organizing
Sabbath schools to teach literacy and promoting national organizations
to develop political strategies.
James Forten
James Forten
(1766–1842) was an African-American abolitionist and wealthy
businessman in Philadelphia. He used his wealth and social standing to
work for civil rights for African Americans in both the city and
nationwide. Beginning in 1817, he opposed the colonization movements,
particularly that of the American Colonization Society. He affirmed African Americans' claim to a stake in the United States of America. He persuaded William Lloyd Garrison to adopt an anti-colonization position and helped fund his newspaper The Liberator (1831–1865), frequently publishing letters on public issues. He became vice-president of the biracial American Anti-Slavery Society,
founded in 1833, and worked for national abolition of slavery. His
large family was also devoted to these causes, and two daughters married
the Purvis brothers, who used their wealth as leaders for abolition.
An American World War II poster from the Office of War Information, Domestic Operations Branch, News Bureau, 1943
According to biographer David Blight,
Douglass, (1817–1895), "played a pivotal role in America's Second
Founding out of the apocalypse of the Civil War, and he very much wished
to see himself as a founder and a defender of the Second American
Republic."
By 1851 Douglass broke bitterly with Garrison and now worked for
abolition and equality through the U.S. Constitution and political
system.
In 1863 during the American Civil War, Turner (1834–1915) was appointed by the US Army as the first African-American chaplain in the United States Colored Troops. After the war, he was appointed to the Freedmen's Bureau
in Georgia. He settled in Macon and was elected to the state
legislature in 1868 during the Reconstruction era. An A.M.E. missionary,
he also planted many AME churches in Georgia after the war. In 1880 he
was elected as the first Southern bishop of the AME Church, after a
fierce battle within the denomination because of its Northern roots.
Angered by the Democrats' regaining power and instituting Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century South, Turner began to support black nationalism and emigration of blacks to the African continent.
Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) was an investigative journalist, educator, and leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Wells dedicated her lifetime to combating prejudice and violence, the
fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, and
became the most famous Black woman in the United States of her time. In
the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through her pamphlets called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, and The Red Record,
investigating frequent claims of whites that lynchings were reserved
for Black criminals only. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice
of whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans
who created economic and political competition—and a subsequent threat
of loss of power—for whites. Well's pamphlet set out to tell the truth
behind the rising violence in the South against African Americans. At
this time, the white press continued to paint the African Americans
involved in the incident as villains and whites as innocent victims.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was an academic sociologist and activist. He rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington
which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white
political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would
receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois
insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation,
which he believed would be brought about by the African-American
intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift,
and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced
education to develop its leadership. He helped organize the NAACP
as a counterweight to Washington's powerful grass roots organizations.
Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly
protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination
in education and employment. His cause included people of color
everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a
proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for the independence of African colonies from European powers.
Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice of the Supreme Court. At the 200th anniversary of the Constitution in 1987, he argued:
I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever
“fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom,
foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the framers particularly
profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective
from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous
social transformations to attain the system of constitutional
government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human
rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite
"The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from
what the framers began to construct two centuries ago....While the Union
survived the civil war, the Constitution did not. In its place arose a
new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14th Amendment,
ensuring protection of the life, liberty, and property of all persons
against deprivations without due process, and guaranteeing equal
protection of the laws.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Harvard University, where he was its first African American to earn a doctorate, Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists seeking equal rights. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise.
Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political
representation, which he believed would be brought about by the
African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift, and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.
Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois used his position in the NAACP to respond to
racist incidents. After the First World War, he attended the Pan-African
Congresses, embraced socialism and became a professor at Atlanta University. Once the Second World War had ended, he engaged in peace activism and was targeted by the FBI. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
Du Bois was a prolific author. Du Bois primarily targeted racism in his polemics, which protested strongly against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination
in education and employment. His cause included people of color
everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a
proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses
to fight for the independence of African colonies from European powers.
Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. His collection
of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, is a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America, challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction era. Borrowing a phrase from Frederick Douglass, he popularized the use of the term color line to represent the injustice of the separate but equal doctrine prevalent in American social and political life. His 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn
is regarded in part as one of the first scientific treatises in the
field of American sociology. In his role as editor of the NAACP's
journal The Crisis, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism and was sympathetic to socialist causes.
Early life
Family and childhood
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred and Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois. Mary Silvina Burghardt's family was part of the very small free black population of Great Barrington and had long owned land in the state. She was descended from Dutch, African, and English ancestors. William Du Bois's maternal great-great-grandfather was Tom Burghardt, a slave (born in West Africa around 1730) who was held by the Dutch colonist Conraed Burghardt. Tom briefly served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War,
which may have been how he gained his freedom during the late 18th
century. His son Jack Burghardt was the father of Othello Burghardt, who
in turn was the father of Mary Silvina Burghardt.
Du Bois as an infant with his mother
William Du Bois claimed Elizabeth Freeman as his relative; he wrote that she had married his great-grandfather Jack Burghardt.
But Freeman was 20 years older than Burghardt, and no record of such a
marriage has been found. It may have been Freeman's daughter, Betsy
Humphrey, who married Burghardt after her first husband, Jonah Humphrey,
left the area "around 1811", and after Burghardt's first wife died (c.
1810). If so, Freeman would have been William Du Bois's
step-great-great-grandmother. Anecdotal evidence supports Humphrey's
marrying Burghardt; a close relationship of some form is likely.
William Du Bois's paternal great-grandfather was James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York, an ethnic French-American of Huguenot origin who fathered several children with slave women. One of James' mixed-race sons was Alexander, who was born on Long Cay in the Bahamas in 1803; in 1810, he immigrated to the United States with his father. Alexander Du Bois traveled and worked in Haiti, where he fathered a son, Alfred, with a mistress. Alexander returned to Connecticut, leaving Alfred in Haiti with his mother.
Sometime before 1860, Alfred Du Bois immigrated to the United
States, settling in Massachusetts. He married Mary Silvina Burghardt on
February 5, 1867, in Housatonic, a village in Great Barrington. Alfred left Mary in 1870, two years after their son William was born.
Mary Du Bois moved with her son back to her parents' house in Great
Barrington, and they lived there until he was five. She worked to
support her family (receiving some assistance from her brother and
neighbors), until she suffered a stroke in the early 1880s. She died in 1885.
Great Barrington had a majority European American
community, who generally treated Du Bois well. He attended the local
integrated public school and played with white schoolmates. As an adult,
he wrote about racism that he felt as a fatherless child and being a
minority in the town. But teachers recognized his ability and encouraged
his intellectual pursuits, and his rewarding experience with academic
studies led him to believe that he could use his knowledge to empower
African Americans. In 1884, he graduated from the town's Great Barrington High School with honors. When he decided to attend college, the congregation of his childhood church, the First Congregational Church of Great Barrington, raised the money for his tuition.
University education
The title page of Du Bois's Harvard dissertation, Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States of America: 1638–1871
Relying on this money donated by neighbors, Du Bois attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1885 to 1888.
Like other Fisk students who relied on summer and intermittent teaching
to support their university studies, Du Bois taught school during the
summer of 1886 after his sophomore year. His travel to and residency in the South was Du Bois's first experience with Southern racism, which at the time encompassed Jim Crow laws, bigotry, suppression of black voting, and lynchings; the lattermost reached a peak in the next decade.
After receiving a bachelor's degree from Fisk, he attended Harvard College (which did not accept course credits from Fisk) from 1888 to 1890, where he was strongly influenced by professor William James, prominent in American philosophy.
Du Bois paid his way through three years at Harvard with money from
summer jobs, an inheritance, scholarships, and loans from friends. In
1890, Harvard awarded Du Bois his second bachelor's degree, cum laude, in history. In 1891, Du Bois received a scholarship to attend the sociology graduate school at Harvard.
He wrote about his time in Germany: "I found myself on the
outside of the American world, looking in. With me were white folk –
students, acquaintances, teachers – who viewed the scene with me. They
did not always pause to regard me as a curiosity, or something
sub-human; I was just a man of the somewhat privileged student rank,
with whom they were glad to meet and talk over the world; particularly,
the part of the world whence I came." After returning from Europe, Du Bois completed his graduate studies; in 1895, he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Wilberforce
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: ...
How does it feel to be a problem? ... One ever feels his two-ness, – an
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;
two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps
it from being torn asunder ... He would not Africanize America, for
America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach
his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro
blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible
for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and
spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed
roughly in his face.
—Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People", 1897
In the summer of 1894, Du Bois received several job offers, including from Tuskegee Institute; he accepted a teaching job at Wilberforce University in Ohio. At Wilberforce, Du Bois was strongly influenced by Alexander Crummell, who believed that ideas and morals are necessary tools to effect social change. While at Wilberforce, Du Bois married Nina Gomer, one of his students, on May 12, 1896.
Philadelphia
After two years at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a one-year research job from the University of Pennsylvania as an "assistant in sociology" in the summer of 1896. He performed sociological field research in Philadelphia's African-American neighborhoods, which formed the foundation for his landmark study, The Philadelphia Negro, published in 1899 while he was teaching at Atlanta University. It was the first case study of a black community in the United States. Among his Philadelphia consultants on the project was William Henry Dorsey,
an artist who collected documents, paintings and artifact pertaining to
Black history. Dorsey compiled hundreds of scrapbooks on the lives of
Black people during the 19th century and built a collection that he laid
out in his home in Philadelphia. Du Bois used the scrapbooks in his
research.
By the 1890s, Philadelphia's black neighborhoods had a negative
reputation in terms of crime, poverty, and mortality. Du Bois's book
undermined the stereotypes with empirical evidence and shaped his
approach to segregation and its negative impact on black lives and
reputations. The results led him to realize that racial integration was
the key to democratic equality in American cities. The methodology employed in The Philadelphia Negro,
namely the description and the mapping of social characteristics onto
neighborhood areas was a forerunner to the studies under the Chicago
School of Sociology.
While taking part in the American Negro Academy (ANA) in 1897, Du Bois presented a paper in which he rejected Frederick Douglass's
plea for black Americans to integrate into white society. He wrote: "we
are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of
creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its
African fatherland". In the August 1897 issue of The Atlantic Monthly,
Du Bois published "Strivings of the Negro People", his first work aimed
at the general public, in which he enlarged upon his thesis that
African Americans should embrace their African heritage while
contributing to American society.
Atlanta University
In July 1897, Du Bois left Philadelphia and took a professorship in history and economics at the historically black Atlanta University in Georgia. His first major academic work was his book The Philadelphia Negro
(1899), a detailed and comprehensive sociological study of the
African-American people of Philadelphia, based on his fieldwork in
1896–1897. This breakthrough in scholarship was the first scientific
study of African Americans and a major contribution to early scientific
sociology in the U.S.
Du Bois coined the phrase "the submerged tenth" to describe the
black underclass in the study. Later in 1903, he popularized the term,
the "Talented tenth",
applied to society's elite class. His terminology reflected his opinion
that the elite of a nation, both black and white, were critical to
achievements in culture and progress.
During this period he wrote dismissively of the underclass, describing
them as "lazy" or "unreliable", but – in contrast to other scholars – he
attributed many of their societal problems to the ravages of slavery.
Du Bois's output at Atlanta University was prodigious, in spite
of a limited budget: he produced numerous social science papers and
annually hosted the Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems. He also received grants from the U.S. government to prepare reports about African-American workforce and culture. His students considered him to be a teacher that was brilliant, but aloof and strict.
First Pan-African Conference
Du Bois attended the First Pan-African Conference, held in London on July 23–25, 1900, shortly ahead of the Paris Exhibition of 1900 ("to allow tourists of African descent to attend both events".) The Conference had been organized by people from the Caribbean: Haitians Anténor Firmin and Benito Sylvain and Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams.
Du Bois played a leading role in drafting a letter ("Address to the
Nations of the World"), asking European leaders to struggle against
racism, to grant colonies in Africa and the West Indies the right to self-government and to demand political and other rights for African Americans. By this time, southern states were passing new laws and constitutions to disfranchise most African Americans, an exclusion from the political system that lasted into the 1960s.
At the conclusion of the conference, delegates unanimously
adopted the "Address to the Nations of the World", and sent it to
various heads of state where people of African descent were living and
suffering oppression.
The address implored the United States and the imperial European
nations to "acknowledge and protect the rights of people of African
descent" and to respect the integrity and independence of "the free
Negro States of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, etc." It was signed by Bishop Alexander Walters (President of the Pan-African Association),
the Canadian Rev. Henry B. Brown (vice-president), Williams (General
Secretary) and Du Bois (chairman of the committee on the Address). The address included Du Bois's observation, "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line." He used this again three years later in the "Forethought" of his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
1900 Paris Exposition
Du Bois was the primary organizer of The Exhibit of American Negroes at the Exposition Universelle
held in Paris between April and November 1900, for which he put
together a series of 363 photographs aiming to commemorate the lives of
African Americans at the turn of the century and challenge the racist
caricatures and stereotypes of the day. Also included were charts, graphs, and maps. He was awarded a gold medal for his role as compiler of the materials, which are now housed at the Library of Congress.
Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise
Du Bois in 1904
In the first decade of the new century, Du Bois emerged as a spokesperson for his race, second only to Booker T. Washington.
Washington was the director of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and
wielded tremendous influence within the African-American and white
communities. Washington was the architect of the Atlanta Compromise,
an unwritten deal that he had struck in 1895 with Southern white
leaders who dominated state governments after Reconstruction.
Essentially the agreement provided that Southern blacks, who
overwhelmingly lived in rural communities, would submit to the current
discrimination, segregation, disenfranchisement,
and non-unionized employment; that Southern whites would permit blacks
to receive a basic education, some economic opportunities, and justice
within the legal system; and that Northern whites would invest in
Southern enterprises and fund black educational charities.
Despite initially sending congratulations to Washington for his Atlanta Exposition Speech, Du Bois later came to oppose Washington's plan, along with many other African Americans, including Archibald H. Grimke, Kelly Miller, James Weldon Johnson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar – representatives of the class of educated blacks that Du Bois would later call the "talented tenth".Du Bois felt that African Americans should fight for equal rights and
higher opportunities, rather than passively submit to the segregation
and discrimination of Washington's Atlanta Compromise.
Du Bois was inspired to greater activism by the lynching of Sam Hose, which occurred near Atlanta in 1899.
Hose was tortured, burned, and hanged by a mob of two thousand whites.
When walking through Atlanta to discuss the lynching with newspaper
editor Joel Chandler Harris,
Du Bois encountered Hose's burned knuckles in a storefront display. The
episode stunned Du Bois, and he resolved that "one could not be a calm,
cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and
starved". Du Bois realized that "the cure wasn't simply telling people
the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth".
In 1901, Du Bois wrote a review critical of Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery, which he later expanded and published to a wider audience as the essay "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" in The Souls of Black Folk. Later in life, Du Bois regretted having been critical of Washington in those essays.
One of the contrasts between the two leaders was their approach to
education: Washington felt that African-American schools should focus
primarily on industrial education topics
such as agricultural and mechanical skills, to prepare southern blacks
for the opportunities in the rural areas where most lived. Du Bois felt that black schools should focus more on liberal arts
and academic curriculum (including the classics, arts, and humanities),
because liberal arts were required to develop a leadership elite.
However, as sociologist E. Franklin Frazier and economists Gunnar Myrdal and Thomas Sowell
have argued, such disagreement over education was a minor point of
difference between Washington and Du Bois; both men acknowledged the
importance of the form of education that the other emphasized.
Sowell has also argued that, despite genuine disagreements between the
two leaders, the supposed animosity between Washington and Du Bois
actually formed among their followers, not between Washington and Du
Bois themselves. Du Bois also made this observation in an interview published in The Atlantic Monthly in November 1965.
Founders of the Niagara Movement in 1905. Du Bois is in the middle row, with white hat.
In 1905, Du Bois and several other African-American civil rights activists – including Fredrick McGhee, Max Barber and William Monroe Trotter – met in Canada, near Niagara Falls, where they wrote a declaration of principles opposing the Atlanta Compromise, and which were incorporated as the Niagara Movement in 1906.
They wanted to publicize their ideals to other African Americans, but
most black periodicals were owned by publishers sympathetic to
Washington, so Du Bois bought a printing press and started publishing Moon Illustrated Weekly in December 1905.
It was the first African-American illustrated weekly, and Du Bois used
it to attack Washington's positions, but the magazine lasted only for
about eight months. Du Bois soon founded and edited another vehicle for his polemics, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line, which debuted in 1907. Freeman H. M. Murray and Lafayette M. Hershaw served as The Horizon's co-editors.
The Niagarites held a second conference in August 1906, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's birth, at the West Virginia site of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Reverdy C. Ransom
spoke, explaining that Washington's primary goal was to prepare blacks
for employment in their current society: "Today, two classes of Negroes
...are standing at the parting of the ways. The one counsels patient
submission to our present humiliations and degradations ... The other
class believe that it should not submit to being humiliated, degraded,
and remanded to an inferior place. ...[I]t does not believe in bartering
its manhood for the sake of gain."
In an effort to portray the genius and humanity of the black race, Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of 14 essays. James Weldon Johnson said the book's effect on African Americans was comparable to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The introduction famously proclaimed that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line".
Each chapter begins with two epigraphs – one from a white poet, and one
from a black spiritual – to demonstrate intellectual and cultural
parity between black and white cultures.
A major theme of the work was the double consciousness
faced by African Americans: being both American and black. This was a
unique identity which, according to Du Bois, had been a handicap in the
past, but could be a strength in the future: "Henceforth, the destiny of
the race could be conceived as leading neither to assimilation nor
separatism but to proud, enduring hyphenation."
Jonathon S. Kahn in Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of Du Bois shows how Du Bois, in his The Souls of Black Folk, represents an exemplary text of pragmatic religious naturalism.
On page 12, Kahn writes: "Du Bois needs to be understood as an African
American pragmatic religious naturalist. By this I mean that, like Du
Bois the American traditional pragmatic religious naturalism, which runs
through William James, George Santayana, and John Dewey, seeks religion without metaphysical
foundations." Kahn's interpretation of religious naturalism is very
broad but he relates it to specific thinkers. Du Bois's
anti-metaphysical viewpoint places him in the sphere of religious
naturalism as typified by William James and others.
Racial violence
Two calamities in the autumn of 1906 shocked African Americans, and
they contributed to strengthening support for Du Bois's struggle for
civil rights to prevail over Booker T. Washington's accommodationism. First, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 Buffalo Soldiers because they were accused of crimes as a result of the Brownsville affair. Many of the discharged soldiers had served for 20 years and were near retirement. Second, in September, riots broke out in Atlanta,
precipitated by unfounded allegations of black men assaulting white
women. This was a catalyst for racial tensions based on a job shortage
and employers playing black workers against white workers. Ten thousand whites rampaged through Atlanta, beating every black person they could find, resulting in over 25 deaths. In the aftermath of the 1906 violence, Du Bois urged blacks to withdraw their support from the Republican Party, because Republicans Roosevelt and William Howard Taft did not sufficiently support blacks. Most African Americans had been loyal to the Republican Party since the time of Abraham Lincoln. Du Bois endorsed Taft's rival William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 presidential election despite Bryan's acceptance of segregation.
Du Bois wrote the essay, "A Litany at Atlanta", which asserted
that the riot demonstrated that the Atlanta Compromise was a failure.
Despite upholding their end of the bargain, blacks had failed to receive
legal justice in the South. Historian David Levering Lewis has written
that the Compromise no longer held because white patrician planters, who
took a paternalistic role, had been replaced by aggressive businessmen
who were willing to pit blacks against whites.
These two calamities were watershed events for the African American
community, marking the ascendancy of Du Bois's vision of equal rights.
Academic work
Once we were told: Be worthy and fit and the ways are open. Today,
the avenues of advancement in the army, navy, civil service, and even
business and professional life are continually closed to black
applicants of proven fitness, simply on the bald excuse of race and
color.
—Du Bois, "Address at Fourth Niagara Conference", 1908
In addition to writing editorials, Du Bois continued to produce
scholarly work at Atlanta University. In 1909, after five years of
effort, he published a biography of abolitionist John Brown. It
contained many insights, but also contained some factual errors. The work was strongly criticized by The Nation, which was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard,
who was writing his own, competing biography of John Brown. Possibly as
a result, Du Bois's work was largely ignored by white scholars. After publishing a piece in Collier's magazine warning of the end of "white supremacy",
Du Bois had difficulty getting pieces accepted by major periodicals,
although he did continue to publish columns regularly in The Horizon magazine.
Du Bois was the first African American invited by the American Historical Association (AHA) to present a paper at their annual conference. He read his paper, Reconstruction and Its Benefits, to an astounded audience at the AHA's December 1909 conference. The paper went against the mainstream historical view, promoted by the Dunning School of scholars at Columbia University, that Reconstruction
was a disaster, caused by the ineptitude and sloth of blacks. To the
contrary, Du Bois asserted that the brief period of African-American
leadership in the South accomplished three important goals: democracy,
free public schools, and new social welfare legislation.
Du Bois asserted that it was the federal government's failure to manage the Freedmen's Bureau, to distribute land, and to establish an educational system, that doomed African-American prospects in the South. When Du Bois submitted the paper for publication a few months later in The American Historical Review, he asked that the word 'Negro' be capitalized. The editor, J. Franklin Jameson, refused, and published the paper without the capitalization. The paper was mostly ignored by white historians. Du Bois later developed his paper as his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in America, which marshaled extensive references to support his assertions. The AHA did not invite another African-American speaker until 1940.
NAACP era
In May 1909, Du Bois attended the National Negro Conference in New York. The meeting led to the creation of the National Negro Committee,
chaired by Oswald Garrison Villard, and dedicated to campaigning for
civil rights, equal voting rights, and equal educational opportunities. The following spring, in 1910, at the second National Negro Conference, the attendees created the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). At Du Bois's suggestion, the word "colored", rather than "black", was used to include "dark skinned people everywhere".
Dozens of civil rights supporters, black and white, participated in the
founding, but most executive officers were white, including Mary White Ovington, Charles Edward Russell, William English Walling, and its first president, Moorfield Storey.
Feeling inspired by this, Indian social reformer and civil rights activist B. R. Ambedkar contacted Du Bois in the 1940s. In a letter to Du Bois in 1946, he introduced himself as a member of the "Untouchables of India" and "a student of the Negro problem" and expressed his interest in the NAACP's petition to the United Nations.
He noted that his group was "thinking of following suit"; and requested
copies of the proposed statement from Du Bois. In a letter dated July
31, 1946, Du Bois responded by telling Ambedkar he was familiar with his
name, and that he had "every sympathy with the Untouchables of India."
The Crisis
Du Bois, c. 1911
NAACP leaders offered Du Bois the position of Director of Publicity and Research.
He accepted the job in the summer of 1910, and moved to New York after
resigning from Atlanta University. His primary duty was editing the
NAACP's monthly magazine, which he named The Crisis.
The first issue appeared in November 1910, and Du Bois wrote that its
aim was to set out "those facts and arguments which show the danger of
race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people". The journal was phenomenally successful, and its circulation would reach 100,000 in 1920.
Typical articles in the early editions polemics against the dishonesty
and parochialism of black churches, and discussions on the Afrocentric
origins of Egyptian civilization. Du Bois's African-centered view of ancient Egypt was in direct opposition to many Egyptologists of his day, including Flinders Petrie, whom Du Bois had met a conference.
A 1911 Du Bois editorial helped initiate a nationwide push to induce the federal government to outlaw lynching. Du Bois, employing the sarcasm he frequently used, commented on a lynching in Pennsylvania:
"The point is he was black. Blackness must be punished. Blackness is
the crime of crimes ... It is therefore necessary, as every white
scoundrel in the nation knows, to let slip no opportunity of punishing
this crime of crimes. Of course if possible, the pretext should be great
and overwhelming – some awful stunning crime, made even more horrible
by the reporters' imagination. Failing this, mere murder, arson, barn
burning or impudence may do."
First Issue of The Crisis, November 1910
The Crisis carried Du Bois editorials supporting the ideals of
unionized labor but denouncing its leaders' racism; blacks were barred
from membership. Du Bois also supported the principles of the Socialist Party of America (he held party membership from 1910 to 1912), but he denounced the racism demonstrated by some socialist leaders. Frustrated by Republican president Taft's failure to address widespread lynching, Du Bois endorsed Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential race, in exchange for Wilson's promise to support black causes.
Throughout his writings, Du Bois supported women's rights and women's suffrage, but he found it difficult to publicly endorse the women's right-to-vote movement because leaders of the suffragism movement refused to support his fight against racial injustice. A 1913 Crisis editorial broached the taboo subject of interracial marriage:
although Du Bois generally expected persons to marry within their race,
he viewed the problem as a women's rights issue, because laws
prohibited white men from marrying black women. Du Bois wrote "[anti-miscegenation] laws
leave the colored girls absolutely helpless for the lust of white men.
It reduces colored women in the eyes of the law to the position of dogs.
As low as the white girl falls, she can compel her seducer to marry her
... We must kill [anti-miscegenation laws] not because we are anxious
to marry the white men's sisters, but because we are determined that
white men will leave our sisters alone."
During 1915−1916, some leaders of the NAACP – disturbed by financial losses at The Crisis,
and worried about the inflammatory rhetoric of some of its essays –
attempted to oust Du Bois from his editorial position. Du Bois and his
supporters prevailed, and he continued in his role as editor. In a 1919 column titled "The True Brownies", he announced the creation of The Brownies' Book, the first magazine published for African-American children and youth, which he founded with Augustus Granville Dill and Jessie Redmon Fauset.
The 1910s were a productive time for Du Bois. In 1911, he attended the First Universal Races Congress in London and he published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. Two years later, Du Bois wrote, produced, and directed a pageant for the stage, The Star of Ethiopia. In 1915, Du Bois published The Negro,
a general history of black Africans, and the first of its kind in
English. The book rebutted claims of African inferiority, and would come
to serve as the basis of much Afrocentric historiography in the 20th century. The Negro
predicted unity and solidarity for colored people around the world, and
it influenced many who supported the Pan-African movement.
In 1915, The Atlantic Monthly carried a Du Bois essay, "The African Roots of the War", which consolidated his ideas on capitalism, imperialism, and race. He argued that the Scramble for Africa
was at the root of World War I. He also anticipated later communist
doctrine, by suggesting that wealthy capitalists had pacified white
workers by giving them just enough wealth to prevent them from
revolting, and by threatening them with competition by the lower-cost
labor of colored workers.
Combating racism
Du Bois used his influential NAACP position to oppose a variety of racist incidents. When the silent film The Birth of a Nation
premiered in 1915, Du Bois and the NAACP led the fight to ban the
movie, because of its racist portrayal of blacks as brutish and lustful.
The fight was not successful, and possibly contributed to the film's
fame, but the publicity drew many new supporters to the NAACP.
The private sector was not the only source of racism: under
President Wilson, the plight of African Americans in government jobs
suffered. Many federal agencies adopted whites-only employment
practices, the Army excluded blacks from officer ranks, and the
immigration service prohibited the immigration of persons of African
ancestry. Du Bois wrote an editorial in 1914 deploring the dismissal of blacks from federal posts, and he supported William Monroe Trotter when Trotter brusquely confronted Wilson about the President's failure to fulfill his campaign promise of justice for blacks.
A photograph of the lynching of Jesse Washington
The Crisis continued to wage a campaign against lynching. In
1915, it published an article with a year-by-year tabulation of 2,732
lynchings from 1884 to 1914. The April 1916 edition covered the group lynching of six African Americans in Lee County, Georgia. Later in the June 1916 issue, the "Waco Horror" article covered the lynching of Jesse Washington, a mentally impaired 17-year-old African American. Du Bois included photographs of it in the article. The article broke new ground by utilizing undercover reporting to expose the conduct of local whites in Waco, Texas.
The early 20th century was the era of the Great Migration of blacks from the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
Du Bois wrote an editorial supporting the Great Migration, because he
felt it would help blacks escape Southern racism, find economic
opportunities, and assimilate into American society.
Also in the 1910s the American eugenics movement
was in its infancy, and many leading eugenicists were openly racist,
defining Blacks as "a lower race". Du Bois opposed this view as an
unscientific aberration, but still maintained the basic principle of
eugenics: that different persons have different inborn characteristics
that make them more or less suited for specific kinds of employment, and
that by encouraging the most talented members of all races to procreate
would better the "stocks" of humanity.
World War I
As the United States prepared to enter World War I in 1917, Du Bois's colleague in the NAACP, Joel Spingarn, established a camp to train African Americans to serve as officers in the United States Armed Forces.
The camp was controversial, because some whites felt that blacks were
not qualified to be officers, and some blacks felt that African
Americans should not participate in what they considered a white man's
war. Du Bois supported Spingarn's training camp, but was disappointed when the Army forcibly retired one of its few black officers, Charles Young, on a pretense of ill health.
The Army agreed to create 1,000 officer positions for blacks, but
insisted that 250 come from enlisted men, conditioned to taking orders
from whites, rather than from independent-minded blacks who came from
the camp.
Over 700,000 blacks enlisted on the first day of the draft, but were
subject to discriminatory conditions which prompted vocal protests from
Du Bois.
Du Bois organized the 1917 Silent Parade in New York, to protest the East St. Louis riots
After the East St. Louis riots
occurred in the summer of 1917, Du Bois traveled to St. Louis to report
on the riots. Between 40 and 250 African Americans were massacred by
whites, primarily due to resentment caused by St. Louis industry hiring
blacks to replace striking white workers. Du Bois's reporting resulted in an article "The Massacre of East St. Louis", published in the September issue of The Crisis, which contained photographs and interviews detailing the violence. Historian David Levering Lewis concluded that Du Bois distorted some of the facts in order to increase the propaganda value of the article. To publicly demonstrate the black community's outrage over the riots, Du Bois organized the Silent Parade, a march of around 9,000 African Americans down New York City's Fifth Avenue, the first parade of its kind in New York, and the second instance of blacks publicly demonstrating for civil rights.
The Houston riot of 1917
disturbed Du Bois and was a major setback to efforts to permit African
Americans to become military officers. The riot began after Houston police
arrested and beat two black soldiers; in response, over 100 black
soldiers took to the streets of Houston and killed 16 whites. A military
court martial was held, and 19 of the soldiers were hanged, and 67
others were imprisoned.
In spite of the Houston riot, Du Bois and others successfully pressed
the Army to accept the officers trained at Spingarn's camp, resulting in
over 600 black officers joining the Army in October 1917.
Federal officials, concerned about subversive viewpoints
expressed by NAACP leaders, attempted to frighten the NAACP by
threatening it with investigations. Du Bois was not intimidated, and in
1918 he predicted that World War I would lead to an overthrow of the European colonial system and to the "liberation" of colored people worldwide – in China, in India, and especially in the Americas. NAACP chairman Joel Spingarn
was enthusiastic about the war, and he persuaded Du Bois to consider an
officer's commission in the Army, contingent on Du Bois writing an
editorial repudiating his anti-war stance. Du Bois accepted this bargain and wrote the pro-war "Close Ranks" editorial in June 1918 and soon thereafter he received a commission in the Army.
Many black leaders, who wanted to leverage the war to gain civil rights
for African Americans, criticized Du Bois for his sudden reversal. Southern officers in Du Bois's unit objected to his presence, and his commission was withdrawn.
After the war
A family evacuating their house after it was vandalized in the Chicago race riot
When the war ended, Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1919 to attend the first Pan-African Congress and to interview African-American soldiers for a planned book on their experiences in World War I. He was trailed by U.S. agents who were searching for evidence of treasonous activities. Du Bois discovered that the vast majority of black American soldiers were relegated to menial labor as stevedores and laborers. Some units were armed, and one in particular, the 92nd Division (the Buffalo soldiers), engaged in combat.
Du Bois discovered widespread racism in the Army, and concluded that
the Army command discouraged African Americans from joining the Army,
discredited the accomplishments of black soldiers, and promoted bigotry.
Du Bois returned from Europe more determined than ever to gain
equal rights for African Americans. Black soldiers returning from
overseas felt a new sense of power and worth, and were representative of
an emerging attitude referred to as the New Negro.
In the editorial "Returning Soldiers" he wrote: "But, by the God of
Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if, now that the war is over, we do
not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner,
longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own
land."
The most violent episode during the Red Summer was a massacre in Elaine, Arkansas in which nearly 200 blacks were murdered.
Reports coming out of the South blamed the blacks, alleging that they
were conspiring to take over the government. Infuriated with the
distortions, Du Bois published a letter in the New York World, claiming that the only crime the black sharecroppers had committed was daring to challenge their white landlords by hiring an attorney to investigate contractual irregularities.
Over 60 of the surviving blacks were arrested and tried for conspiracy, in the case known as Moore v. Dempsey.
Du Bois rallied blacks across America to raise funds for the legal
defense, which, six years later, resulted in a Supreme Court ruling
authored by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Although the victory had little immediate impact on justice for blacks
in the South, it marked the first time the federal government used the 14th Amendment guarantee of due process to prevent states from shielding mob violence.
In 1920, Du Bois published Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, the first of his three autobiographies.
The "veil" was that which covered colored people around the world. In
the book, he hoped to lift the veil and show white readers what life was
like behind the veil, and how it distorted the viewpoints of those
looking through it – in both directions.
The book contained Du Bois's feminist essay, "The Damnation of Women",
which was a tribute to the dignity and worth of women, particularly
black women.
Concerned that textbooks used by African-American children
ignored black history and culture, Du Bois created a monthly children's
magazine, The Brownies' Book. Initially published in 1920, it was aimed at black children, who Du Bois called "the children of the sun".
Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey
Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1921 to attend the second Pan-African Congress. The assembled black leaders from around the world issued the London Resolutions
and established a Pan-African Association headquarters in Paris. Under
Du Bois's guidance, the resolutions insisted on racial equality, and
that Africa be ruled by Africans (not, as in the 1919 congress, with the consent of Africans).[190] Du Bois restated the resolutions of the congress in his Manifesto to the League of Nations, which implored the newly formed League of Nations to address labor issues and to appoint Africans to key posts. The League took little action on the requests.
Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, promoter of the Back-to-Africa movement and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), denounced Du Bois's efforts to achieve equality through integration, and instead endorsed racial separatism. Du Bois initially supported the concept of Garvey's Black Star Line, a shipping company that was intended to facilitate commerce within the African diaspora.
But Du Bois later became concerned that Garvey was threatening the
NAACP's efforts, leading Du Bois to describe him as fraudulent and
reckless.
Responding to Garvey's slogan "Africa for the Africans", Du Bois said
that he supported that concept, but denounced Garvey's intention that
Africa be ruled by African Americans.
Du Bois wrote a series of articles in The Crisis between
1922 and 1924 attacking Garvey's movement, calling him the "most
dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and the world."
Du Bois and Garvey never made a serious attempt to collaborate, and
their dispute was partly rooted in the desire of their respective
organizations (NAACP and UNIA) to capture a larger portion of the
available philanthropic funding.
Du Bois decried Harvard's decision to ban blacks from its
dormitories in 1921 as an instance of a broad effort in the U.S. to
renew "the Anglo-Saxon cult; the worship of the Nordic totem, the disfranchisement of Negro, Jew, Irishman, Italian, Hungarian, Asiatic and South Sea Islander – the world rule of Nordic white through brute force." When Du Bois sailed for Europe in 1923 for the third Pan-African Congress, the circulation of The Crisis
had declined to 60,000 from its World War I high of 100,000, but it
remained the preeminent periodical of the civil rights movement. President Calvin Coolidge designated Du Bois an "Envoy Extraordinary" to Liberia and – after the third congress concluded – Du Bois rode a German freighter from the Canary Islands to Africa, visiting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Senegal.
Harlem Renaissance
Du Bois's 1924 work The Gift of Black Folk celebrated the unique contributions of African Americans in building the United States
Du Bois frequently promoted African-American artistic creativity in his writings, and when the Harlem Renaissance
emerged in the mid-1920s, his article "A Negro Art Renaissance"
celebrated the end of the long hiatus of blacks from creative endeavors.
His enthusiasm for the Harlem Renaissance waned as he came to believe
that many whites visited Harlem for voyeurism, not for genuine
appreciation of black art. Du Bois insisted that artists recognize their moral responsibilities, writing that "a black artist is first of all a black artist."
He was also concerned that black artists were not using their art to
promote black causes, saying "I do not care a damn for any art that is
not used for propaganda." By the end of 1926, he stopped employing The Crisis to support the arts.
Debate with Lothrop Stoddard
In 1929, a debate organised by the Chicago Forum Council billed as
"One of the greatest debates ever held" was held between Du Bois and Lothrop Stoddard, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, proponent of eugenics and so-called scientific racism.
The debate was held in Chicago and Du Bois was arguing the affirmative
to the question "Shall the Negro be encouraged to seek cultural
equality? Has the Negro the same intellectual possibilities as other
races?"
Du Bois knew that the racists would be unintentionally funny onstage; as he wrote to Moore, Senator J. Thomas Heflin
"would be a scream" in a debate. Du Bois let the overconfident and
bombastic Stoddard walk into a comic moment, which Stoddard then made
even funnier by not getting the joke. This moment was captured in
headlines "DuBois Shatters Stoddard's Cultural Theories in Debate;
Thousands Jam Hall ... Cheered as He Proves Race Equality," The Chicago Defender's front-page headline ran "5,000 Cheer W.E.B. DuBois, Laugh at Lothrop Stoddard". Ian Frazier of The New Yorker wrotes that the comic potential of Stoddard's bankrupt ideas was left untapped until Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.
Socialism
When Du Bois became editor of The Crisis magazine in 1911, he joined the Socialist Party of America on the advice of NAACP founders Mary White Ovington, William English Walling and Charles Edward Russell. However, he supported the Democrat Woodrow Wilson
in the 1912 presidential campaign, a breach of the rules, and was
forced to resign from the Socialist Party. In 1913, his support for
Wilson was shaken when racial segregation in government hiring was
reported. Du Bois remained "convinced that socialism was an excellent way of life, but I thought it might be reached by various methods."
Nine years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, Du Bois extended a trip to Europe to include a visit to the Soviet Union,
where he was struck by the poverty and disorganization he encountered
in the Soviet Union, yet was impressed by the intense labors of the
officials and by the recognition given to workers. Although Du Bois was not yet familiar with the communist theories of Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, he concluded that socialism might be a better path towards racial equality than capitalism.
Although Du Bois generally endorsed socialist principles, his politics were strictly pragmatic: in the 1929 New York City mayoral election, he endorsed Democrat Jimmy Walker for mayor of New York, rather than the socialist Norman Thomas,
believing that Walker could do more immediate good for blacks, even
though Thomas's platform was more consistent with Du Bois's views. Throughout the 1920s, Du Bois and the NAACP shifted support back and forth between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party,
induced by promises from the candidates to fight lynchings, improve
working conditions, or support voting rights in the South; invariably,
the candidates failed to deliver on their promises.
And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor – all
men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked – who is good?
Not that men are ignorant – what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so
little of men.
—Du Bois, "Of Alexander Crummell", in The Souls of Black Folk, 1903
A rivalry emerged in 1931 between the NAACP and the Communist Party, when the communists responded quickly and effectively to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American youth arrested in 1931 in Alabama for rape. Du Bois and the NAACP felt that the case would not be beneficial to their cause, so they chose to let the Communist Party organize the defense efforts.
Du Bois was impressed with the vast amount of publicity and funds which
the communists devoted to the partially successful defense effort, and
he came to suspect that the communists were attempting to present their
party to African Americans as a better solution than the NAACP.
Responding to criticisms of the NAACP from the Communist Party,
Du Bois wrote articles condemning the party, claiming that it unfairly
attacked the NAACP, and that it failed to fully appreciate racism in the
United States. In their turn, the communist leaders accused him of
being a "class enemy", and claimed that the NAACP leadership was an
isolated elite, disconnected from the working-class blacks they
ostensibly fought for.
Return to Atlanta
Du Bois did not have a good working relationship with Walter White, president of the NAACP since 1931. That conflict, combined with the financial stresses of the Great Depression, precipitated a power struggle over The Crisis. Du Bois, concerned that his position as editor would be eliminated, resigned his job at The Crisis and accepted an academic position at Atlanta University in early 1933. The rift with the NAACP grew larger in 1934 when Du Bois reversed his stance on segregation, stating that "separate but equal" was an acceptable goal for African Americans.
The NAACP leadership was stunned, and asked Du Bois to retract his
statement, but he refused, and the dispute led to Du Bois's resignation
from the NAACP.
After arriving at his new professorship in Atlanta, Du Bois wrote a series of articles generally supportive of Marxism. He was not a strong proponent of labor unions
or the Communist Party, but he felt that Marx's scientific explanation
of society and the economy were useful for explaining the situation of
African Americans in the United States. Marx's atheism also struck a chord with Du Bois, who routinely criticized black churches for dulling blacks' sensitivity to racism.
In his 1933 writings, Du Bois embraced socialism, but asserted that
"[c]olored labor has no common ground with white labor", a controversial
position that was rooted in Du Bois's dislike of American labor unions,
which had systematically excluded blacks for decades. Du Bois did not support the Communist Party in the U.S. and did not vote for their candidate in the 1932 presidential election, in spite of an African American on their ticket.
Black Reconstruction in America, first edition cover, 1935
Back in the world of academia, Du Bois was able to resume his study
of Reconstruction, the topic of the 1910 paper that he presented to the American Historical Association. In 1935, he published his magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America.The book presented the thesis, in the words of the historian David Levering Lewis,
that "black people, suddenly admitted to citizenship in an environment
of feral hostility, displayed admirable volition and intelligence as
well as the indolence and ignorance inherent in three centuries of
bondage."
Du Bois documented how black people were central figures in the American Civil War and Reconstruction era,
and also showed how they made alliances with white politicians. He
provided evidence that the coalition governments established public
education in the South, and many needed social service programs. The
book also demonstrated the ways in which black emancipation
– the crux of Reconstruction – promoted a radical restructuring of
United States society, as well as how and why the country failed to
continue support for civil rights for blacks in the aftermath of Reconstruction.
The book's thesis ran counter to the orthodox interpretation of Reconstruction maintained by white historians, and the book was virtually ignored by mainstream historians until the 1960s.
Thereafter, however, it ignited a "revisionist" trend in the
historiography of Reconstruction, which emphasized black people's search
for freedom and the era's radical policy changes. By the 21st century, Black Reconstruction was widely perceived as "the foundational text of revisionist African American historiography."
In the final chapter of the book, "XIV. The Propaganda of History", Du Bois evokes his efforts at writing an article for the Encyclopædia Britannica
on the "history of the American Negro". After the editors had cut all
reference to Reconstruction, he insisted that the following note appear
in the entry: "White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of
Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists
that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the
South to the Union; established the new democracy, both for white and
black, and instituted the public schools." The editors refused and, so,
Du Bois withdrew his article.
Projected encyclopedia
In 1932, Du Bois was selected by several philanthropies, including the Phelps Stokes Fund, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the General Education Board, to be the managing editor for a proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro, a work which Du Bois had been contemplating for 30 years.
After several years of planning and organizing, the philanthropies
canceled the project in 1938 because some board members believed that Du
Bois was too biased to produce an objective encyclopedia.
Trip around the world
Du Bois took a trip around the world in 1936, which included visits to Germany, China, and Japan. While in Germany, Du Bois remarked that he was treated with warmth and respect. After his return to the United States, he expressed his ambivalence about the Nazi regime. He admired how the Nazis had improved the German economy, but he was horrified by their treatment of the Jewish people, which he described as "an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade".
Following the 1905 Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War,
Du Bois became impressed by the growing strength of Imperial Japan. He
came to view the ascendant Japanese Empire as an antidote to Western
imperialism, arguing for over three decades after the war that its rise
represented a chance to break the monopoly that white nations had on
international affairs.
A representative of Japan's "Negro Propaganda Operations" traveled to
the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, meeting with Du Bois and
giving him a positive impression of Imperial Japan's racial policies.
In 1936, the Japanese ambassador arranged a trip to Japan for Du Bois and a small group of academics, visiting China, Japan, and Manchukuo (Manchuria).
Du Bois viewed Japanese colonialism in Manchuria as benevolent; he
wrote that "colonial enterprise by a colored nation need not imply the
caste, exploitation and subjection which it has always implied in the
case of white Europe."
He also believed that it was natural for Chinese and Japanese to
quarrel with each other as "relatives" and that the segregated schools
in Manchuria were established because the natives spoke Chinese only. While disturbed by the eventual Japanese alliance with Nazi Germany,
Du Bois also argued Japan was only compelled to enter the pact because
of the hostility of the United States and United Kingdom, and he viewed
American apprehensions over Japanese expansion in Asia as racially
motivated both before and after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He was similarly disturbed by how Chinese culture might be extinguished
under Japanese rule but argued that Western imperialism was a greater
existential concern.
World War II
Dusk of Dawn, first edition cover, 1940
Du Bois opposed the US intervention in World War II, particularly in the Pacific War,
because he believed that China and Japan were emerging from the
clutches of white imperialists. He felt that the European Allies waging
war against Japan was an opportunity for whites to reestablish their
influence in Asia.
He was deeply disappointed by the US government's plan for African
Americans in the armed forces: Blacks were limited to 5.8% of the force,
and there were to be no African-American combat units – virtually the
same restrictions as in World War I. With blacks threatening to shift their support to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Republican opponent Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election, Roosevelt appointed a few blacks to leadership posts in the military.
Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois's second autobiography, was published in 1940. The title refers to his hope that African Americans were passing out of the darkness of racism into an era of greater equality. The work is part autobiography, part history, and part sociological treatise.
Du Bois described the book as "the autobiography of a concept of race
... elucidated and magnified and doubtless distorted in the thoughts and
deeds which were mine ... Thus for all time my life is significant for
all lives of men."
In 1943, at age 75, Du Bois was abruptly fired from his position at Atlanta University by college president Rufus Early Clement.
Many scholars expressed outrage, prompting Atlanta University to
provide Du Bois with a lifelong pension and the title of professor emeritus. Arthur Spingarn
remarked that Du Bois spent his time in Atlanta "battering his life out
against ignorance, bigotry, intolerance and slothfulness, projecting
ideas nobody but he understands, and raising hopes for change which may
be comprehended in a hundred years."
Turning down job offers from Fisk and Howard,
Du Bois re-joined the NAACP as director of the Department of Special
Research. Surprising many NAACP leaders, Du Bois jumped into the job
with vigor and determination. During his 10−years hiatus, the NAACP's income had increased fourfold, and its membership had soared to 325,000 members.
Du Bois was a member of the three-person delegation from the NAACP that attended the 1945 conference in San Francisco at which the United Nations was established. The NAACP delegation wanted the United Nations to endorse racial equality and to bring an end to the colonial era.
To push the United Nations in that direction, Du Bois drafted a
proposal that pronounced "[t]he colonial system of government ... is
undemocratic, socially dangerous and a main cause of wars".
The NAACP proposal received support from China, India, and the Soviet
Union, but it was virtually ignored by the other major powers, and the
NAACP proposals were not included in the final United Nations Charter.
After the United Nations conference, Du Bois published Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, a book that attacked colonial empires
and, in the words of a most sympathetic reviewer, "contains enough
dynamite to blow up the whole vicious system whereby we have comforted
our white souls and lined the pockets of generations of free-booting
capitalists."
In late 1945, Du Bois attended the fifth, and final, Pan-African Congress, in Manchester, England. The congress was the most productive of the five congresses, and there Du Bois met Kwame Nkrumah, the future first president of Ghana, who would later invite him to Africa.
Du Bois helped to submit petitions to the UN concerning
discrimination against African Americans, the most noteworthy of which
was the NAACP's "An Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of
Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in
the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for
Redress". This advocacy laid the foundation for the later report and petition called "We Charge Genocide", submitted in 1951 by the Civil Rights Congress.
"We Charge Genocide" accuses the U.S. of systematically sanctioning
murders and inflicting harm against African Americans and therefore
committing genocide.
Cold War
When the Cold War commenced in the mid-1940s, the NAACP distanced itself from communists, lest its funding or reputation suffer. The NAACP redoubled its efforts in 1947 after Life magazine published a piece by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. claiming that the NAACP was heavily influenced by communists. Ignoring the NAACP's desires, Du Bois continued to fraternize with communist sympathizers such as Paul Robeson, Howard Fast and Shirley Graham (his future second wife).
Du Bois wrote "I am not a communist ... On the other hand, I ...
believe ... that Karl Marx ... put his finger squarely upon our
difficulties ...".
In 1946, Du Bois wrote articles giving his assessment of the
Soviet Union; he did not embrace communism and he criticized its
dictatorship.
However, he felt that capitalism was responsible for poverty and
racism, and felt that socialism was an alternative that might ameliorate
those problems.
The Soviets explicitly rejected racial distinctions and class
distinctions, leading Du Bois to conclude that the USSR was the "most
hopeful country on earth".
Du Bois's association with prominent communists made him a liability for the NAACP, especially since the Federal Bureau of Investigation
was starting to aggressively investigate communist sympathizers; so –
by mutual agreement – he resigned from the NAACP for the second time in
late 1948. After departing the NAACP, Du Bois started writing regularly for the leftist weekly newspaper the National Guardian, a relationship that would endure until 1961.
Du Bois was an early and lifelong supporter of Zionism. He viewed Palestinians as uncivilized and viewed Islam as the main factor in what he saw as a lack of progress. However, he did not express support for Israel during the Suez Crisis, instead backing Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Peace activism
Du Bois was a lifelong anti-war activist, but his efforts became more pronounced after World War II. In 1949, Du Bois spoke at the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace
in New York: "I tell you, people of America, the dark world is on the
move! It wants and will have Freedom, Autonomy and Equality. It will not
be diverted in these fundamental rights by dialectical splitting of
political hairs ... Whites may, if they will, arm themselves for
suicide. But the vast majority of the world's peoples will march on over
them to freedom!"
In the spring of 1949, he spoke at the World Congress of the Partisans of Peace
in Paris, saying to the large crowd: "Leading this new colonial
imperialism comes my own native land built by my father's toil and
blood, the United States. The United States is a great nation; rich by
grace of God and prosperous by the hard work of its humblest citizens
... Drunk with power we are leading the world to hell in a new
colonialism with the same old human slavery which once ruined us; and to
a third World War which will ruin the world." Du Bois affiliated himself with a leftist organization, the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions, and he traveled to Moscow as its representative to speak at the All-Soviet Peace Conference in late 1949.
During this period, Du Bois also visited the remains of the
Warsaw Ghetto, an experience he spoke about in a speech titled, "The
Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto" delivered in 1949 and later published in 1952 in the magazine Jewish Life.
In the address, Du Bois reflects on the destruction caused by the Nazi
assault against Jewish peoples and considers the way in which the "race
problem" could extend past a "color-line" and become "a matter of
cultural patterns, perverted teaching and human hate and prejudice,
which reached all sorts of people and caused endless evil to all men". Du Bois' speech champions a broader and more transnational approach to humanitarianism.
The FBI, McCarthyism, and trial
Du Bois (center) and other defendants from the Peace Information Center prepare for their trial in 1951
During the 1950s, the U.S. government's anti-communist McCarthyism campaign targeted Du Bois because of his socialist leanings. Socialist historian Manning Marable characterizes the government's treatment of Du Bois as "ruthless repression" and a "political assassination".
The FBI began to compile a file on Du Bois in 1942,
investigating him for possible subversive activities. The original
investigation appears to have ended in 1943 because the FBI was unable
to discover sufficient evidence against Du Bois, but the FBI resumed its
investigation in 1949, suspecting he was among a group of "Concealed
Communists".
The most aggressive government attack against Du Bois occurred in the
early 1950s, as a consequence of his opposition to nuclear weapons. In
1950 he became chair of the newly created Peace Information Center (PIC), which worked to publicize the Stockholm Appeal in the United States.
The primary purpose of the appeal was to gather signatures on a
petition, asking governments around the world to ban all nuclear
weapons.
In United States v. Peace Information Center, 97 F. Supp. 255 (D.D.C. 1951), the U.S. Justice Department
alleged that the PIC was acting as an agent of a foreign state, and
thus required the PIC to register with the federal government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Du Bois and other PIC leaders refused, and they were indicted for failure to register.
After the indictment, some of Du Bois's associates distanced themselves
from him, and the NAACP refused to issue a statement of support; but
many labor figures and leftists – including Langston Hughes – supported Du Bois.
He was finally tried in 1951 and was represented by civil rights attorney Vito Marcantonio. The case was dismissed when the defense attorney told the judge that "Dr. Albert Einstein has offered to appear as character witness for Dr. Du Bois". Du Bois's memoir of the trial is In Battle for Peace. Even though Du Bois was not convicted, the government confiscated Du Bois's passport and withheld it for eight years.
Communism
Du Bois was bitterly disappointed that many of his colleagues –
particularly the NAACP – did not support him during his 1951 PIC trial,
whereas working class whites and blacks supported him enthusiastically.
After the trial, Du Bois lived in Manhattan, writing and speaking, and
continuing to associate primarily with leftist acquaintances. His primary concern was world peace, and he railed against military actions such as the Korean War, which he viewed as efforts by imperialist whites to maintain colored people in a submissive state.
Du Bois meeting with Mao Zedong in 1959
In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total.
He continued to believe that capitalism was the primary culprit
responsible for the subjugation of colored people around the world, and
although he recognized the faults of the Soviet Union, he continued to
uphold communism as a possible solution to racial problems. In the words
of biographer David Lewis, Du Bois did not endorse communism for its
own sake, but did so because "the enemies of his enemies were his
friends". The same ambiguity characterized his opinions of Joseph Stalin: in 1940 he wrote disdainfully of the "Tyrant Stalin",
but when Stalin died in 1953, Du Bois wrote a eulogy characterizing
Stalin as "simple, calm, and courageous", and lauding him for being the
"first [to] set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make
one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their
individuality".
The U.S. government prevented Du Bois from attending the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. The conference was the culmination of 40 years of Du Bois's dreams – a
meeting of 29 nations from Africa and Asia, many recently independent,
representing most of the world's colored peoples. The conference
celebrated those nations' independence as they began to assert their
power as non-aligned nations during the Cold War. Du Bois praised the conference as "pan-colored" and believed it would have decisive and long-lasting influence.
After the United States Supreme Court ruled in Kent v. Dulles[
that the State Department could not deny passports to citizens who
refused to sign affidavits that they were not communists, Du Bois and
his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois immediately applied for passports.
The two visited both the Soviet Union and China during a 1958 to 1959
trip which Du Bois described as the most significant journey of his
life. Du Bois later wrote approvingly of the conditions in both countries. In 1959, Du Bois gave a speech at Peking University in which he advocated for increased ties between the black people in the United States and China because "China is colored and knows to what a colored skin in this modern world subjects its owner." Du Bois stated that Africa and China should stand together. The speech was reprinted and widely circulated in China, including through the People's Daily and the Peking Review.
Du Bois and Graham Du Bois were staying at the border between Sichuan and Tibet when the 1959 Tibetan uprising began. Describing the events in his Autobiography,
Du Bois concluded, "The landholders and slave drivers and religious
fanatics revolted against the Chinese and failed as they deserved to.
Tibet has belonged to China for centuries. The Communists linked the two
by roads and began reforms in landholding, schools and trade, which now
move quickly."
Du Bois became incensed in 1961 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act,
a key piece of McCarthyist legislation which required communists to
register with the government. To demonstrate his outrage, he joined the Communist Party in October 1961, at the age of 93.
Around that time, he wrote: "I believe in communism. I mean by
communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work
designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its
people and not merely the profit of a part." He asked Herbert Aptheker, a communist and historian of African American history, to be his literary executor.
Death in Africa
Du Bois (center) at his 95th birthday party in 1963, with President Kwame Nkrumah (right) and First Lady Fathia Nkrumah
Nkrumah invited Du Bois to the Dominion of Ghana
to participate in their independence celebration in 1957, but he was
unable to attend because the U.S. government had confiscated his passport in 1951. By 1960 – the "Year of Africa" – Du Bois had recovered his passport, and was able to cross the Atlantic and celebrate the creation of the Republic of Ghana. Du Bois returned to Africa in late 1960 to attend the inauguration of Nnamdi Azikiwe as the first African governor of Nigeria.
While visiting Ghana in 1960, Du Bois spoke with its president about the creation of a new encyclopedia of the African diaspora, the Encyclopedia Africana.
In early 1961, Ghana notified Du Bois that they had appropriated funds
to support the encyclopedia project, and they invited him to travel to
Ghana and manage the project there. In October 1961, at the age of 93,
Du Bois and his wife traveled to Ghana to take up residence and commence
work on the encyclopedia. In early 1963, the United States refused to renew his passport, so he made the symbolic gesture of becoming a citizen of Ghana.
While it is sometimes stated that Du Bois renounced his U.S. citizenship at that time, and he stated his intention to do so, Du Bois never actually did. His health declined during the two years he was in Ghana; he died on August 27, 1963, in the capital, Accra, at the age of 95. The following day, at the March on Washington, speaker Roy Wilkins asked the hundreds of thousands of marchers to honor Du Bois with a moment of silence. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, embodying many of the reforms Du Bois had campaigned for during his entire life, was enacted almost a year after his death.
Du Bois was given a state funeral on August 29–30, 1963, at Nkrumah's request, and was buried near the western wall of Christiansborg Castle (now Osu Castle), then the seat of government in Accra. In 1985, another state ceremony honored Du Bois. With the ashes of his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois, who had died in 1977, his body was re-interred at their former home in Accra, which was dedicated the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture in his memory.
Du Bois's first wife Nina, their son Burghardt, and their daughter
Yolande, who died in 1961, were buried in the cemetery of Great
Barrington, Massachusetts, his hometown.
Personal life
Du Bois was organized and disciplined: his lifelong regimen was to
rise at 7:15, work until 5:00, eat dinner and read a newspaper until
7:00, then read or socialize until he was in bed, invariably before
10:00. He was a meticulous planner, and frequently mapped out his schedules and goals on large pieces of graph paper. Many acquaintances found him to be distant and aloof, and he insisted on being addressed as "Dr. Du Bois".
According to biographer David Levering, Du Bois would also
"unfailingly insist upon the 'correct' pronunciation of his surname.
'The pronunciation of my name is Due Boyss, with the accent on the last syllable,' he would patiently explain to the uninformed." Although he was not gregarious, he formed several close friendships with associates such as Charles Young, Paul Laurence Dunbar, John Hope, Mary White Ovington, and Albert Einstein.
His closest friend was Joel Spingarn – a white man – but Du Bois never accepted Spingarn's offer to be on a first-name basis.[344] Du Bois was something of a dandy – he dressed formally, carried a walking stick, and walked with an air of confidence and dignity.[345] He was relatively short, standing at 5 feet 5.5 inches (166 cm), and always maintained a well-groomed mustache and goatee.[346] He enjoyed singing[347] and playing tennis.[52]
Du Bois married Nina Gomer (b. about 1870, m. 1896, d. 1950),
with whom he had two children. Their son Burghardt died as an infant
before their second child, daughter Yolande, was born. Yolande attended Fisk University and became a high school teacher in Baltimore.[348] Her father encouraged her marriage to Countee Cullen, a nationally known poet of the Harlem Renaissance.[349]
They divorced within two years. She married again and had a daughter,
Du Bois's only grandchild. That marriage also ended in divorce.
Shirley Graham Du Bois
As a widower, Du Bois married Shirley Graham (m. 1951,
d. 1977), an author, playwright, composer, and activist. She brought
her son David Graham to the marriage. David grew close to Du Bois and
took his stepfather's name; he also worked for African-American causes. The historian David Levering Lewis wrote that Du Bois engaged in several extramarital relationships.
Religion
Although Du Bois attended a New England Congregational church as a child, he abandoned organized religion while at Fisk College. As an adult, Du Bois described himself as agnostic or a freethinker, but at least one biographer concluded that Du Bois was virtually an atheist.
However, another analyst of Du Bois's writings concluded that he had a
religious voice, albeit radically different from other African-American
religious voices of his era. Du Bois was credited with inaugurating a
20th-century spirituality to which Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Baldwin also belong.
When asked to lead public prayers, Du Bois would refuse. In his autobiography, Du Bois wrote:
When I became head of a department
at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading
in prayer ... I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any
church creed. ... I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to
modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal
to let religion be taught in the public schools.
Du Bois accused American churches of being the most discriminatory of all institutions. He also provocatively linked African American Christianity to indigenous African religions.
He did occasionally acknowledge the beneficial role that religion
played in African American life – as the "basic rock" which served as an
anchor for African American communities – but in general disparaged
African American churches and clergy because he felt they did not
support the goals of racial equality and hindered activists' efforts.
Although Du Bois was not personally religious, he infused his
writings with religious symbology. Many contemporaries viewed him as a
prophet.His 1904 prose poem, "Credo", was written in the style of a religious creed and widely read by the African-American community. Moreover, Du Bois, both in his own fiction and in stories published in The Crisis, often drew analogies between the lynchings of African Americans and the crucifixion of Jesus. Between 1920 and 1940, Du Bois shifted from overt black messiah symbolism to more subtle messianic language.
Voting
In 1889, Du Bois became eligible to vote at the age of 21. During his life he followed the philosophy of voting for third parties if the Democratic and Republican parties were unsatisfactory; or voting for the lesser of two evils if a third option was not available.
Du Bois was appointed Honorary Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
A bust was commissioned from Ayokunle Odeleye to honor Du Bois, and
dedicated on the Clark Atlanta University on the anniversary of his
birth, February 23, 2013 (pictured right).
In 2023 the government of Ghana signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the W.E.B Du Bois Museum Foundation to develop, rebrand, operate and manage the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture into a major new educational complex to preserve and continue Du Bois' legacy. In 2024, the Mellon Foundation announced a US$5 million grant to provide leadership funds for four years in Phase 1 of the new complex's development.
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