threat to the NAACP, and by extension to himself
and The Crisis,DuBois tempered his outrage in his
published editorials.
DuBois was attentive to intraracial political
matters as well. He had little patience for MARCUS
GARVEY, the Jamaican-born leader of the increas-
ingly popular back-to-Africa movement and the
Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Nathan Huggins notes that DuBois was especially
frustrated by and opposed to Garvey’s efforts be-
cause PAN-AFRICANISMas a movement and an ide-
ology had been “a lifelong commitment” and
because “the problems were much too complex and
torturous to be given into the hands of one whose
ego tended to make its own realities.” DuBois
began formal efforts to advance pan-Africanism in
1919 when he began to organize against colonial
governments in Africa and to work toward the in-
dependence of all African nations. He was instru-
mental in organizing international conferences, the
first of which was held in Paris in 1919 during the
Versailles Peace Conference. In his explication of
the differences between the two men, Huggins
notes that DuBois worked to “achieve a careful bal-
ance of Negro integration in the American society”
while Garvey “simply announced a kind of black
separatism even to the point of collusion with the
Ku Klux Klan” (Huggins, 47).
When JESSIEFAUSETjoined the staff of The Cri-
sis,she invigorated the journal, developed its focus
on literary matters, and provided a welcoming and
respected forum in which writers of the period
could showcase their work. DuBois worked closely
with Fauset, a prolific writer, attentive editor, and
mentor extraordinaire who became known as a lit-
erary midwife of the Harlem Renaissance. The two
were cocreators of THEBROWNIES’ BOOK,one of
the most deliberate efforts during the period to
create an appealing, empowering, literature for
children of color that sparked their imaginations,
provided intriguing details about African history
and culture, and was free of damaging racial stereo-
types. The literary focus of the journal also allowed
DuBois to cultivate relationships with contempo-
rary writers and artists, many of whom had incisive
political agendas and perspectives as well. Writer
ARNABONTEMPS, who in 1941 saw DuBois deliver
a lecture in CHICAGOon “This War and the Darker
Races,” testified to the elder scholar’s lasting ap-
peal. In a letter to Langston Hughes, Bontemps
noted that DuBois “spoke... to an overflow
crowd—at 50¢ a head” and that the lecture was
“[v]ery deep, scholarly and enlightening” (Nichols,
80). Bontemps, also intrigued by DuBois’s plans to
publish an Encyclopedia of the Negro,invited him to
Chicago to meet with potential contributors and
was able to say proudly that “progress was made”
(Nichols, 77). The two men shared a number of
similar ideas, a reality that on at least one occasion
prompted Bontemps to lament the quick pen of the
respected activist. In 1939, when Bontemps was
planning to compose an essay on the African-
American press, DuBois published a forthright
analysis in the Chicago Defender.The piece, which
Bontemps confessed “takes some of the steam out
of my plan to a Negro press article,” insisted that
“the black press is a symptom, not a disease; a re-
sult of the Negro’s lack of participation in Ameri-
can life, not a cause of anything. The thing to treat
is the condition which makes the daily press insuffi-
cient for the needs of Negroes,” wrote Bontemps in
his overview of DuBois’s essay.
Writer CLAUDEMCKAYadmired DuBois but,
as scholar Wayne Cooper notes, “found DuBois
too aloof and formal for any genuine friendship to
develop between them” (Cooper, 141). McKay,
who developed a passionate interest in Russian
politics and the Russian Revolution, also was
somewhat put off by DuBois’s “sneering” at the
historic moment in Russian history that he be-
lieved was “the greatest event in the history of hu-
manity” (Cooper, 141). In turn, DuBois struggled
to acknowledge HOME TO HARLEM (1927), a
novel that “nauseated” him and contained such
grimy portraits of Harlem life that he felt “dis-
tinctly like taking a bath” (Lewis, 214). In response
to CANEby JEANTOOMER, DuBois noted that the
volume could have benefited immensely had
Toomer had a deeper familiarity with the South
and with Georgia, but he went on to celebrate
Toomer as one who might soon be regarded “as a
writer who first dared to emancipate the colored
world from the conventions of sex” and whose por-
traits of women and relationships were “painted
with a frankness that is going to make his black
readers shrink and criticize; and yet they are done
with a certain splendid, careless truth” (Turner,
50). Writer ZORANEALEHURSTONwas conflicted126 DuBois, William Edward Burghardt