W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on 23 February 1868. He was educated at Fisk University, Tennessee, the University of Berlin, and Harvard, becoming, in 1895, the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. It was in Germany, he wrote, that he ‘became a freethinker’, and his conscious break with organised religion was hastened when, later, ‘a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing’. His life, academic and activist, was dedicated to efforts for racial equality, through organisation, education, and cooperation, motivated by a profound sense of injustice and a scholarly devotion to knowledge effectively applied: notably, in using science and history to refute myths of racial inferiority, and empower America’s black population.

My life had its significance and its only deep significance because it was part of a Problem; but that problem was, as I continue to think, the central problem of the greatest of the world’s democracies and so the Problem of the future world. The problem of the future world is the charting, by means of intelligent reason, of a path not simply through the resistances of physical force, but through the vaster and far more intricate jungle of ideas conditioned on unconscious and subconscious reflexes of living things; on blind unreason and often irresistible urges of sensitive matter; of which the concept of race is today one of the most unyielding and threatening.

The use of science and shared knowledge to dispel prejudice and increase a sense of human unity was at the heart of the Congress, and closely aligned with Du Bois’ own ideals. As a historian and social scientist, he believed in history and sociology as tools to educate, empower, and reform, particularly valuable in challenging oppressive power structures and addressing the subjugation of African Americans. The hope of subsequent congresses was shattered by the outbreak of the First World War, but the idealism of the Congress and its organisers – who sought international cooperation and understanding – found later expression in efforts toward the United Nations. Du Bois himself went on to play a leading role in pacifist bodies such as the Peace Information Center, and its successor the American Peace Crusade. In 1945, Du Bois served as a consultant to the UN founding convention, and in 1947 published 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.

In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1968, Du Bois stated repeatedly his rejection of ‘Christian dogma’. He despised the hypocrisy of religious bodies which had sanctioned slavery, and enforced racial division and discrimination, including by refusing membership to African Americans. ‘From my 30th year on’, he wrote, ‘I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.’ Perhaps most unequivocally, in describing the Soviet Union he emphasised both the virtue of secular education, and the personal impossibility of religious belief. He wrote:

…the Soviet Union does not allow any church of any kind to interfere with education, and religion is not taught in the public schools. It seems to me that this is the greatest gift of the Russian Revolution to the modern world. Most educated modern men no longer believe in religious dogma. If questioned they will usually resort to double-talk before admitting the fact. But who today actually believes that this world is ruled and directed by a benevolent person of great power who, on humble appeal, will change the course of events at our request? Who believes in miracles? Many folk follow religious ceremonies and services; and allow their children to learn fairy tales and so-called religious truth, which in time the children come to recognize as conventional lies told by their parents and teachers for the children’s good. One can hardly exaggerate the moral disaster of this custom.

Du Bois’ diverse career as intellectual and activist was underpinned by a central concern for racial equality, human opportunity, and an honest approach to history. His rejection of religion made him no less committed to his fellow humans, instead securing his belief in the vital role of the individual in giving meaning to life, and in improving it for – and with – others. Those who knew Du Bois recalled him not only as a formidable scholar and activist, but also as an amiable friend and colleague. Horace Bumstead, who recruited Du Bois to Atlanta University, wrote that ‘to his fellow teachers… he brought joy, for though often looked upon in the outside world as a pessimist, he was about the jolliest member of our Faculty’.

In a speech delivered at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1968, scarcely six weeks before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed Bumstead, noting:

It is axiomatic that he will be remembered for his scholarly contributions and organisational attainments. These monuments are imperishable. But there were human qualities less immediately visible that are no less imperishable.

He went on: