W. E. B. Du Bois

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois became the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He rose as a leader of the Niagara Movement, rejecting the Atlanta Compromise and insisting that an educated "talented tenth" could lead the race toward full civil rights and political power. He co-founded the NAACP in 1909 and edited The Crisis, publishing essays that protested lynching, Jim Crow, and the doctrine of separate but equal. His 1903 collection The Souls of Black Folk became a cornerstone of African-American literature; his 1935 Black Reconstruction challenged the narrative that blamed freed slaves for Reconstruction's failures. He championed Pan-Africanism, organized congresses to free African colonies, embraced socialism, and late in life was targeted by the FBI for peace activism. He spent his final years in Ghana, where he died in Accra on August 27, 1963.