Du Bois worked for social reform through his study of all aspects of African-American life, in an effort to educate blacks and promote understanding between the relationship of blacks to white America. His studies embodied the first scientific approach to examining social issues, and as a result he is considered to be the father of social science. He completed the bulk of his doctoral work during two years in Berlin, where he came to the understanding of racism as a worldwide issue, opposed to a national issue.įollowing the completion of his doctoral thesis entitled The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, Du Bois began his lifelong career as educator, researcher and social advocate.
Following three years in the South, Du Bois completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard, focusing on history and philosophy. His contact with the post- Civil War South in the capacity of student and teacher solidified his commitment to education and mobilization of African Americans. Endowed with outstanding intellect, Du Bois traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to attend Fisk College on scholarship in 1885. The racism he experienced as a child in New England formed the basis of his lifelong struggle for equal rights. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, into a large white community in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. His assertion is fortuitous, and the collection continues to provide insight into the ways that the African-American culture is intrinsic to the larger American culture, and how history has made that relationship inherently problematic. Coined the Father of social science, Du Bois brings together a blend of history, sociological data, poetry, song, and the benefit of his personal experience to propose his vision of how and why color poses such a dilemma at the turn of the twentieth century. First published in 1903, it was reprinted twenty-four times between then and 1940 alone it is easily Du Bois' most widely read book and is considered a masterpiece.
government's efforts at Reconstruction to a discussion of the role of religion in he black community. The work consists of fourteen essays on various topics, from a history of the U.S. These succinct lines summarize the aim of the collection, which is to impress upon the world the particular experience of being an African American some forty years after the Civil War. This meaning is not without interest to you, gentle reader for the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line. Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the twentieth century.
Du Bois introduces The Souls of Black Folk with the forethought:
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