Happy Birthday, W. E. B. Du Bois

Born February 23, 1868, Great Barrington, MA | Died August 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana

Today the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates writer, critic, sociologist, historian, and activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois on the 157th anniversary of his birth. Du Bois’s first published work, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, was his doctoral thesis for Harvard University; he was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard. Du Bois was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and an editor of the organization’s monthly magazine, The Crisis.

W. E. B Du Bois, 1907, James E. Purdy.

“All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, 1946, Carl Van Vechten.

“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get.”

The first issue of the NAACP’s monthly magazine, The Crisis, which Du Bois edited.

First published essay:

"Strivings of the Negro People," The Atlantic Monthly, August 1897.

W.E.B Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899) was his first formal book and is a reflection of his academic work from 1896-1897. His second book was The Souls of Black Folk and was published just three years later and is featured in the Library of America’s collected works of Du Bois.

Select nonfiction bibliography: 

• The Souls of Black Folk (Library of America Paperback Classics, 2009). 

• W. E. B. Du Bois: Writings (Library of America, 2021).

• “Of the Coming of John” (from The Souls of Black Folk, 1903), reprinted in The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates & Robert Atwan (Mariner Books, 2001).

See also:

Works by authors whose essays have been reprinted (R) or listed in Notables (N) in The Best American Essays series: 

•  John Hope Franklin, "W. E. B. Du Bois: A Personal Memoir," Massachusetts Review,  Fall 1991 (N).

Visit The W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where you can view the entire collection of Du Bois’s papers digitally.

Visit the Du Bois website for access to many of Du Bois’s writings and scholarly work about Du Bois.

Watch W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices, featuring Wesley Brown, Thulani Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, and Amiri Baraka.

Listen to “Socialism and the American Negro,” an address by Du Bois to the Socialist Club at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1960.

Listen to “The Atlanta Years,” a talk by Du Bois.