William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and editor. historian David Levering Lewis wrote, "in the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism— scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."

The first African-American graduate of Harvard University, where he earned his PhD in history, Du Bois later became a professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. He became the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910, becoming founder and editor of the NAACP's journal the crisis. Du Bois rose to national attention in his opposition of Booker T. Washington's ideas of social integration between whites and blacks, campaigning instead for increased political representation for blacks in order to guarantee civil rights, and the formation of a black elite that would work for the progress of the African American race.

Writings

Du Bois wrote many books, including three major autobiographies. Among his most significant works are The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), John Brown (1909), Black Reconstruction (1935), and Black Folk, Then and Now (1939). His book The Negro (1915) influenced the work of several pioneer Africanist scholars, such as Drusilla Dunjee Houston and William Leo Hansberry.

In the New York times review of the souls of black folk, the anonymous book reviewer wrote, "for it is the Jim Crow Car, and the fact that he may not smoke a cigar and drink a cup of tea with the white man in the south, that most galls William E. Burghardt Du Bois of the Atlanta College for negroes."

It is the thought of a negro of northern education who has lived long among his brethren of the south yet who can not fully feel the meaning of some things which these brethren know by instinct — and which the southern-bred white knows by a similar instinct: certain things which are by both accepted as facts — not theories — fundamental attitudes of race to race which are the product of conditions extending over centuries, as are the somewhat parallel attitudes of the gentry to the peasantry in other countries.

While prominent white scholars denied African-American cultural, political and social relevance to American history and civic life, in his epic work black reconstruction, Du Bois documented how black people were central figures in the American civil war and reconstruction, and also showed how they made alliances with white politicians. He provided evidence to disprove the dunning school theories of reconstruction, showing the coalition governments established public education in the south, as well as many needed social service programs. He demonstrated the ways in which black emancipation — the crux of reconstruction — promoted a radical restructuring of United States society, as well as how and why the country failed to continue support for civil rights for blacks in the aftermath of reconstruction. This theme was taken up later and expanded by Eric Foner and Leon F. Litwack, the two leading late twentieth century scholars of the reconstruction era.

In 1940, at Atlanta University, Du Bois founded Phylon magazine. In 1946, he wrote The World and Africa: an inquiry into the part that Africa has played in world history. in 1945, he helped organize the historic fifth pan-African conference in Manchester, great Britain. In total, Du Bois wrote 22 books, including five novels. He helped establish four academic journals.

Criminology

Du Bois began writing about the sociology of crime in 1897, shortly after receiving his PhD. From Harvard (Zuckerman, 2004, p. 2). His first work involving crime, a program of social reform, was shortly followed by a second, The Study of the Negro problems (Du Bois, 1897; Du Bois, 1898). The first work that involved in-depth criminological study and theorizing was The Philadelphia Negro, in which a large section of the sociological study was devoted to analysis of the black criminal population in Philadelphia (Du Bois, 1899).

Du Bois (1899) set forth three significant parts to his criminology theory. The first was that Negro crime was caused by the strain of the "social revolution" experienced by black Americans as they began to adapt to their new-found freedom and position in the nation. This theory was similar to Durkheim's (1893) Anomie Theory, C the boom in crime in the black population. he explained, "The appearance of crime among the southern negroes is a symptom of wrong social conditions--of a stress of life greater than a large part of the community can bear." (Du Bois, 1901b, p. 745). He distinguished between the strains on southern Negroes and those on northern Negroes because the problems of city life in the north were different from those of the southern rural sharecroppers.

Secondly, Du Bois (1904a) believed that black crime declined as the African-American population moved toward a more equal status with whites. This idea, referred to later as "stratification," was developed in a similar manner later in the twentieth century by Merton in his 1968 structure-strain theory of deviance. In The Philadelphia Negro and later statistical studies, Du Bois found direct correlations between low levels of employment and education and high levels of criminal activity.

Thirdly, Du Bois held that the talented tenth or the "exceptional men" of the black race would be the ones to lead the race and save it from its criminal problems (Du Bois, 1903, p. 33). Du Bois saw the evolution of a class system within black American society as necessary to carry out the improvements necessary to reduce crime (Du Bois, 1903). He set forth a number of solutions to crime that the talented tenth had to enact (Du Bois, 1903, p. 2).

He was perhaps the first criminologist to combine historical fact with social change and used the combination to postulate his theories. He attributed the crime increase after the civil war to the "increased complexity of life," competition for jobs in industry (especially with the recent Irish immigrants), and the mass exodus of blacks from the farmland and immigration to cities (Du Bois, 1899). Du Bois (1899, p. 64) states in The Philadelphia Negro:

Naturally then, if men are suddenly transported from one environment to another, the result is lack of harmony with the new conditions; lack of harmony with the new physical surroundings leading to disease and death or modification of physique; lack of harmony with social surroundings leading to crime.

American historical association

In 1909, W. E. B. Du Bois addressed the American historical association (aha) at its annual conference, the first African American to do so. According to David Levering Lewis, "his would be the first and last appearance of an African American on the program until 1940."

In a review of the second volume of Lewis's biography of Du Bois, Michael R. Winston observed that, in understanding American history, one must question "how black Americans developed the psychological stamina and collective social capacity to cope with the sophisticated system of racial domination that white Americans had anchored deeply in law and custom." Winston continued, "Although any reasonable answer is extraordinarily complex, no adequate one can ignore the man (Du Bois) whose genius was for 70 years at the intellectual epicenter of the struggle to destroy white supremacy as public policy and social fact in the United States."

Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany

Du Bois became impressed by the growing strength of imperial Japan following the Japanese victory in the Russo Japanese war. He saw the victory of Japan over tsarist Russia as an example of "colored pride." Hiked Yasuichi ran Japan’s "negro propaganda operations." after traveling to the United States to speak with students at Howard University, Scripps College, and Tuskegee University, Yasuichi influenced Du Bois's opinions of imperial Japan. In 1936, Yasuichi and the Japanese ambassador arranged a trip to Japan for Du Bois and a small group of academics. The trip was to include stops in Japan, China, and the Soviet Union. The soviet stop was canceled after Karl Radek, Du Bois's diplomatic contact, was swept up in Stalin’s purges. While on the Chinese leg of the trip, Du Bois commented that the source of Chinese-Japanese enmity was china's "submission to white aggression and Japan's resistance." he asked the Chinese people to welcome the Japanese as liberators. Du Bois joined a large group of African-American academics who cited the Mukden incident to justify Japan's occupation and annexation of the formerly European-held southern Manchuria.

During 1936 Du Bois also visited Nazi Germany. He later noted that he had received more respect from German academics than he had from white American colleagues. On his return to the United States, he voiced his ambivalence about the Nazi regime. While admiring how the Nazis had improved the German economy, he was horrified by their treatment of the Jews, which he described as "an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish inquisition and the African slave trade".

Communism and activism

Du Bois was one of a number of African-American leaders investigated by the FBI, which claimed in May 1942 that, "his writing indicates him to be a socialist". He was chairman of the peace information center at the start of the Korean War, and among the signers of the Stockholm peace pledge, which opposed the use of nuclear weapons.

In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. senator from New York on the American labor party ticket and polled a little over 200,000 votes, about 4% of the total. Although he lost, Du Bois remained committed to the progressive labor cause. In 1958, he would join with Trotskyites, ex-communists and independent radicals in proposing the creation of a united left-wing coalition to challenge for seats in elections for the New York state senate and assembly.

In March 16, 1953, upon the death of Joseph Stalin, Du Bois controversially wrote of him in the national guardian:

Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. he seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also - and this was the highest proof of his greatness - he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.

While Stalin had fallen into disfavor among most of the American left of that era, and communism had come to be regarded as "the god that failed" in the eyes of such African-American luminaries as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, Du Bois, apparently not believing reports of Stalin's purges and dismissing them as propaganda, persisted in his admiration for Stalin. He was frequently challenged for his support of Stalin, particularly after Khrushchev’s 1956 "cult of personality" speech which seemed to further evidence Stalin's purges. Having once, after a 1920s visit to Russia, observed that, "Russia is the victim of a determined propaganda of lies", he remained persistently skeptical of American media reports regarding the USSR; when challenged as to his beliefs on Stalin in 1956, in one instance he conceded that, "Stalin was probably too cruel; but... he conquered Hitler."

In regards to soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, the 88-year-old Du Bois defended the USSR, suggesting that the Hungarian revolution was a plot of, "landlords and fascists". For this he has been criticized by some historians for allegedly succumbing to dogmatism; while he was "one of the great pioneers of anti-colonialist scholarship", he was, "a headstrong idealist: he idealized Stalinism... he saw what he wished and needed to see, and thus he replicated the hard, domineering consciousness he condemned."

Du Bois visited communist china during the great leap forward. He was questioned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) about his alleged communist sympathies. he was indicted in the United States under the foreign agents registration act and acquitted for lack of evidence. in 1959 Du Bois received the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1961, at the age of 93, he joined the communist party USA, at a time when it was long past its peak of support.

Just forty days before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at an event marking the hundredth anniversary of Du Bois' birth, at Carnegie hall in New York City:

We cannot talk of Dr. Du Bois without recognizing that he was a radical all of his life. Some people would like to ignore the fact that he was a communist in his later years. It is worth noting that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the civil war and corresponded with him freely. in contemporary life, the English speaking world has no difficulty with the fact that Sean O'Casey was a literary giant of the twentieth century and a communist, or that Pablo Neruda is generally considered the greatest living poet though he also served in the Chilean senate as a communist. it is time to cease muting the fact that dr. Du Bois was a genius and chose to be a communist. our irrational obsessive anti-communism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking. …Dr. Du Bois' greatest virtue was his committed empathy with all the oppressed and his divine dissatisfaction with all forms of injustice.