W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most outstanding and magnificent black intellectuals of his time. He actively fought and opposed the racism which was imposed by American capitalism on the members of his race by the Jim Crow laws which were enacted after the end of the Civil War.
His most acclaimed book was The Souls of Black Folk which was first published in 1903.
In 2005, Barnes and Noble reissued his book, in hard cover, in their Classic Series, with an introduction by Farah Jasmine Griffin and a chronology titled The World of W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folks.
The excerpts which follow are from that chronology, (with the exception of 1976 and 1992, which I have added.)
1865 The Civil War ends, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery. In the South, implementation of racial segregation, or “Jim Crow” laws, begins. The Freedman's Bureau is established to protect the economic interests of the freed slaves.
1866 The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is established in Pulaski, Tennessee. The American Missionary Association establishes Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, for former slaves.
1867 When most southern states refuse to ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment designed to protect the rights of black citizens, Congress passes the Reconstruction Acts, which divide the South into five jurisdictions and require new state constitutions to include universal manhood suffrage.
1868 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is born on February 23 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred Du Bois and Mary Silvina Burghardt. Soon after his birth, Alfred leaves home, and William is raised mostly by his mother. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution grants the freed slaves citizenship and guarantees their civil rights.
1870 The Fifteenth Amendment gives blacks the right to vote.
1880 While attending Great Barrington High School, Du Bois works as the western Massachusetts correspondent for the New York Age, the New York Globe, and the Springfield Republican.
1884 Du Bois graduates as valedictorian of his class and wins a scholarship to Fisk University.
1885 He enrolls at Fisk and serves as editor of the Fisk Herald, the college newspaper. His summer job teaching in the school districts of rural Tennessee exposes him to the reality of the Jim Crow laws and sparks in him an interests in civil rights.
1888 Du Bois receives his Bachelor of Arts at Fisk University. He enters Harvard University as a junior.
1890 He graduates with honors from Harvard in the spring and begins his graduate studies in African-American history at Harvard in the Fall.
1892 Du Bois receives a Slater Fund fellowship and travels to Germany to study at the University of Berlin for the next two years.
1895 Harvard awards Du Bois a Ph. D., making him the first African-American to earn the degree. Harvard University Press publishes his dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade.
1896 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of “separate but equal” segregation laws in Plessey v. Ferguson. The National Association of Colored Women is established in Washington,
1897 Du Bois moves to Georgia to teach economics and history at Atlanta University.
1899 He publishes The Philadelphia Negro, the first sociological study of African Americans.
1903 Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folks, a treatise that includes an attack on Booker T. Washington “accommodating” policy and Du Bois solution to the “race problem.”
1905 Du Bois founds the Niagara Movement and serves as its general secretary. The group, made up of black leaders, promotes racial equality.
1909 Du Bois's John Brown is published. The 1908 lynching of of two blacks in Springfield, Illinois, leads to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Du Bois is appointed the NAACP's director of publicity and research and is elected, the only black, to the board of directors. He founds and edits The Crisis, the NAACP's monthly journal, in which he criticizes segregation and gender inequality, stating that “every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage.”
1915 Du Bois's The Negro is published. The NAACP leads a boycott of D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation, which stereotypes blacks.
1919 Du Bois organizes the Pan-African Congress in Paris.
1920 The NAACP awards Du Bois its Spingarn Medal for achievement. The Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote. Du Bois publishes Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil.
1924 Du Bois's book The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America is published.
1934 Du Bois begins to subscribe to Marxist ideology and its interpretation of race relations. He resigns from the NAACP over the issue of voluntary segregation, which he favors over integration. He returns to Atlanta University as chairman of the department of Sociology.
1935 Du Bois publishes Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880.
1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues the Fair Employment Act to prohibit racial discrimination by private employers.
1944 Du Bois returns to the NAACP as director of publicity and research.
1945 On behalf of the NAACP Du Bois attends the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco. At the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, he meets with the African leaders Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana, and Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya.
1948 Du Bois is dismissed from the NAACP. He is appointed co-chairman of the Council on African Affairs, which monitors political events in Africa and supports African liberation movements.
1950 Du Bois is appointed chairman of the Peace Information Center in New York City and is nominated by the New York Progressive Party for the U.S. Senate. His wife Nina, dies.
1951 At the height of McCarthyism, Du Bois is indicted as a spy for the Soviet Union and is put on trial. Although he was acquitted of “subversive activities” charges brought against him by the Justice Department, he is denied a passport until 1958. Du Bois marries Shirley Graham.
1952 He publishes In Battle for Peace: The Story of My 83rd Birthday.
1954 The Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education prohibits segregation in public schools.
1955 On December 1, Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man. As a result, Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a boycott.
1958 Du Bois is awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the U.S.S.R.
1961 Du Bois joins the Communist Party. When he is invited Ghana's President Nkrumah to move to Ghana and edit the Encyclopedia Africana, Du Bois leaves the United States for good.
1962 He renounces his American citizenship.
1963 Du Bois becomes a citizen of Ghana. He dies on August 27 and is buried in Accra, Ghana. On August 28, on the eve of the March on Washington, Martin Luther King leads a eulogy to Du Bois.
1964 The Civil Rights Act is passed to make voting easier for African Americans but is thwarted by the power of the states to impose registration restrictions.
1965 With much opposition from politicians in the South, the The Voting Rights Act is passed, empowering the national government to override state-imposed limitations on the right of African Americans to vote.
1976 The site of the house where W. E. B. Du Bois grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is designated a National Historic Landmark.
1992 The Unite States Postal Service honors W. E. B. Du Bois with his portrait on a postage stamp.
The FBI, like in the case of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., actively spied and conducted illegal surveillance on the life of W. E. B. Du Bois. (part 1 of 5)
Wikipedia Page of W.E.B. Du Bois
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JG: One recommended movie for viewing, after you read this, is to go to your local library and pick up a copy of “The Great Debaters” with the usually excellent acting by Denzel Washington. Don't miss it. It is superb. But, it is not about Du Bois.
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