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Remembering W.E.B. Du Bois: a giant in the struggle for Black freedom in the US

As America faces a period of renewed racial and political polarization, Du Bois’s vision for building a multi-racial democracy is more relevant than ever

By Robert Greene II
Remembering W.E.B. Du Bois: a giant in the struggle for Black freedom in the US
Du Bois, born this day in 1868, wanted to build a democracy that respects the rights of all | wikimedia commons / Public Domain
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Today marks the birthday of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an intellectual giant who committed his life to advancing Black freedom in the US and abroad.

Born in Massachusetts in 1868, in the wake of the Civil War, Du Bois attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, a historically Black college, and became the first African American to earn a doctorate degree from Harvard University in 1895.

His massive corpus of work – from ‘The Philadelphia Negro’ to ‘Black Reconstruction in America’ – is a testament to his academic genius and desire for establishing a truly equitable society.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0