rican American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard
University, DuBois was a founder of the NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE (NAACP), editor of The CRISIS magazine,
author of more than 20 books, founder and editor
of five journals and magazines, and an American
Labor Party candidate for the U.S. Senate. DuBois’s
most enduring legacy is recorded in his now-clas-
sic text, The SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS (1903), a study
of African-American history and discourse and
the source of his original formulations of double
consciousness, the talented tenth, and the problem
of the color line, which continue to have an enor-
mous, if hotly contested, influence.
W. E. B. DuBois was born in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, to Alfred
DuBois and Mary Silvinia Burghardt. Raised pri-
marily by his mother, DuBois spent his early years
excelling at local schools, developing his skill as a
journalist (submitting articles to the Springfield
Republican and the New York Globe), and work-
ing odd jobs to supplement his mother’s modest
income. Though DuBois distinguished himself
as an outstanding student (he was valedictorian
at his high school graduation) and had hopes of
attending Harvard University, town leaders of
Great Barrington had other intentions, granting
DuBois a scholarship to attend an all-black edu-
cational institution, Fisk University, in Nashville,
Tennessee. His years at Fisk University marked
his first encounter with a substantial black com-
munity and would prove formative for his later
thought regarding the sources of African-Ameri-
can culture (the Negro spirituals) and the impor-
tance of higher education as a training ground for
black leadership (the “talented tenth”). Entering
Fisk in 1885, DuBois completed an A.B. in three
years’ time and continued on to pursue his dream
of studying at Harvard University, where he was
admitted as a junior in 1888; he received a second
B.A. cum laude in philosophy in 1890 and an M.A.
in history in 1891.
At Harvard DuBois met, studied with, and be-
friended the leading scholars of his day—William
James, Josiah Royce, Albert Bushnell Hart, and
George Santayana—and began to garner recogni-
tion as a young scholar and orator of exceptional
talent and skill. In 1892, DuBois won a Slater Fund
Fellowship to pursue graduate study in history
and economics at the Friedrich Wilhelm Univer-
sity, later Berlin University. The year 1893 marked
a major turning point in DuBois’s life and, while a
student in Germany and on the occasion of his 25th
birthday, he dedicated himself to the improvement
of African Americans. After two years of study in
Germany, DuBois ran out of money and, unable
to finish his graduate studies or receive his degree
from a German university, returned to the United
States, where he finished his doctorate at Harvard
University, becoming the first African American to
receive a Ph.D. from that institution. His doctoral
dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave
Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870
(1896), was published as the first volume in the
Harvard Historical Monograph Series.
Beginning in 1894, DuBois took a series of aca-
demic positions for varying lengths of time at Wil-
berforce University (1894–1896), the University of
Pennsylvania (1896–1897), and Atlanta University
(1897-1910, and later from 1933–1944), where he
would have his longest tenure. During this initial
16-year period, DuBois established himself as a
prolific scholar and meticulous researcher, pub-
lishing his groundbreaking sociological study, The
Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), as well
as his greatest work, The Souls of Black Folk: Es-
says and Sketches (1903). During this same period,
DuBois supervised the Atlanta University confer-
ences on the sociological dimensions of African-
American life, which resulted in the publication
between 1898 and 1914 of 16 reports on the po-
litical, economic, educational, religious, and social
status of African Americans. This research became
the foundation for the future academic discipline
of African-American studies. DuBois also founded
and edited three journals during this time, The
Moon (1905–1906), The Horizon: A Journal of the
Color Line (1907–1910), and The Crisis: A Record
of the Darker Races (1910–1919; 1934), a monthly
magazine for the NAACP.
During the years 1895 to 1915, DuBois began
a historic and protracted ideological struggle with
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, founder and president
of Tuskegee Institute and then a recognized blackDuBois, W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt) 149