Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance

Dunbar, ALAINLOCKE, and CARTERG. WOODSON
to form the AMERICANNEGROACADEMY, the na-
tion’s first significant African-American learned so-
ciety. The organization promoted intellectual
debate and was committed to publishing works by
notable and emerging scholars of color. DuBois’s
study, The Social Evolution of the Black South,ap-
peared in 1911. Later in his life, and during the last
10 years of the Harlem Renaissance, DuBois inten-
sified his participation in pan-Africanist circles. He
organized international pan-Africanist conferences
in FRANCE, England, and the United States that
provided important platforms from which leading
scholars and political activists could question colo-
nial practices and ideology and explore avenues
that would result in effective pan-African unity and
solidarity. DuBois continued his political agitation
in the years following the Harlem Renaissance and
worked with such organizations as the Council on
African Affairs.
DuBois’s long-standing relationship to the NA-
TIONALASSOCIATION FOR THEADVANCEMENT OF
COLOREDPEOPLE(NAACP) began in the early
1900s when he became part of the Niagara Move-
ment, a gathering of some 60 intellectuals, political
figures, and reformers, such as Harvard graduate
and newspaper editor WILLIAMMONROETROT-
TER, Mary Talbert, Atlanta University president
JOHN HOPE, and journalist JESSE MAX BARBER.
When the NAACP was founded in 1910 and based
in New York, DuBois joined the organization as the
director of the organization’s publications and as
the first editor of its flagship monthly, THECRISIS.
DuBois founded and edited The Crisis,the
first of the major Harlem Renaissance journals to
appear, in 1910. THE MESSENGER, founded by
Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph, began
publication seven years later, and OPPORTUNITY,
the journal of the National Urban League, was
founded 13 years later in 1923. It was not his first
journal venture. In 1905 he established Moon,a
weekly journal that lasted through 1906, and the
Horizon,a monthly periodical published from 1907
through 1910. During his 24-year tenure as Crisis
editor, DuBois was dedicated to using the journal
as a forum in which to promote intense and rigor-
ous debates about national and global issues relat-
ing to such pressing contemporary realities such as
World War I, poverty, black migration, racial disen-

franchisement, and LYNCHING. His editorials were

noted for their uncompromising stand on racial

aesthetics, the priorities of the NEW NEGRO,

trends in African-American literature, and the re-

sponsibilities of African-American writers. Histo-

rian Nathan Huggins asserts that “[i]n regard to

violence and injustice against the Negro, no one

was a more ruthless muckraker than Du Bois”

(Huggins, 28). He did not shy away from exposing

the hypocrisy of federal officials and policy and was

determined to provide readers with the most infor-

mative statistical and narrative assessments related

to issues such as mob violence and discrimination

against African Americans in the military. He was

especially outspoken against Woodrow Wilson, the

president who approved segregation in all federal

offices and authorized the 1918 execution of sol-

diers alleged to have participated in race riots in

Houston. His combative critiques led to potential

charges of sedition, and in order to minimize the

DuBois, William Edward Burghardt 125

W. E. B. DuBois, author, scholar, public intellectual,

civil rights leader, and The Crisiseditor (Yale Collection

of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and

Manuscript Library)