spokesman on the “Negro Problem,” over the
leadership of African Americans. In favor of lib-
eral arts training and social and political activism
for full citizenship rights of African Americans,
DuBois rejected Washington’s advocacy of voca-
tional education, social compromise, and political
accommodation. He penned his most critical as-
sessment of Washington’s leadership and its short-
comings in the third chapter of The Souls of Black
Folk, titled “Of Booker T. Washington and Others.”
This criticism led to both enmity between the two
men and the emergence and organization in 1905
of the Niagara movement, a gathering of African-
American leaders who shared DuBois’s opposition
to Washington’s leadership and philosophy. The
Niagara movement ended just months before the
creation of the NAACP in 1909, an organization
initially created and led by white Americans sym-
pathetic to the plight of African Americans that
now stands as the premier and predominantly
African-American civil rights organization in the
United States.
In 1910, the NAACP hired DuBois as the di-
rector of publication and research, and he subse-
quently founded and edited The Crisis from 1910
to 1934. During his nearly 20-year tenure as editor,
DuBois discovered his métier in writing Crisis edi-
torials and articles and cemented his reputation as
a scholar and leader of national standing regarding
the problem of race. He displayed an unparalleled
intellectual grasp of the variety and complexity of
problems generated by the color line. In editori-
als that gave impassioned yet measured voice to
the strange meaning of being black in America,
DuBois addressed the segregation of black troops
during the World War I, the epidemic of lynch-
ing, Jim Crow laws, voting rights for women, the
civil rights policies of American presidents, and
the cultural and literary achievements of African-
American artists. DuBois was not above deliver-
ing the occasional jeremiad against prominent
African-American leaders who failed to meet his
expectations for leadership. In 1924 he directed a
series of withering and acerbic editorials and es-
says against MARCUS GARVEY, founder of the Uni-
versal Negro Improvement Association and the
Black Star Line, whose commercial projects and
leadership of a growing grassroots movement
among working-class blacks DuBois found both
troubling and questionable. In 1934 DuBois di-
rected similar criticism against the policies of the
NAACP’s board, both its advocacy of integration
and its reluctance to adopt more radical measures
in the fight against racial injustice in America. This
last series of editorials led to DuBois’s resignation
as editor of The Crisis.
DuBois’s reputation as a scholar and African-
American leader reached far beyond national
boundaries. As early as 1900, DuBois attended the
first Pan-African Conference in London, a gather-
ing of delegates of African descent from around
the world. In a speech titled “Address to the Na-
tions of the World,” DuBois formally announced
that “the problem of the twentieth century is the
problem of the color-line,” a phrase that would
be often repeated and puzzled over for the next
century. In the nearly 45 years that followed, Du-
Bois organized five more Pan-African conferences
(1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945) in Europe
and America, earning him the title “the Father of
Pan Africanism.” DuBois was also internationally
known and respected for his principled stands
against American and European racism, imperial-
ism, colonialism, and economic exploitation, yet
his views and organizing activities on behalf of
peace and civil rights were less well received and
tolerated in the United States. Frequently asked
to speak and visit in Poland, the Soviet Union,
China, Japan, and Africa, DuBois was not shy of
criticizing America’s racial practices or appealing
to socialist and communist nations to support the
ongoing struggle of African Americans for civil
rights in America. His outspokenness earned him
the label of communist sympathizer and resulted
in the loss of his passport from 1952 until 1958,
when a Supreme Court ruling allowed him to re-
gain it. In 1959, DuBois embarked on a world tour
that included Europe, Eastern bloc nations, and
China, where, on his 91st birthday, with the help
of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he broadcast an
address to Africa on Radio Beijing.
DuBois’s major writings from 1935 until 1960
reflect the enormous breadth of his thought and
social and political concerns. In 1935 DuBois pub-150 DuBois, W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt)