Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Northern Jurisdiction, PHA
Valley of London England, Orient of Europe
W.E.B. DuBois History
W.E.B. Du Bois Biographylliam Edward Burghardt Du Bois
( 1868 – 1963 )
William
Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963)
DuBois was an
American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author
and editor. At the age of 95, in 1963, he became a naturalized citizen of
Ghana. Historian David Levering Lewis wrote, "In the course of his long,
turbulent career, W. E. B. DuBois pursued virtually every possible avenue to
solve the problems of twentieth-century racism.
Family
history
William
Edward Burghardt DuBois was born on February 23, 1868, to Alfred DuBois and
Mary Silvina Burghardt DuBois in Great Barrington (MA) - an overwhelmingly
white community where he grew up. Mary Silvina Burghardt's family was part of
the very small free black population there, having long owned land in the
state. Their family descended from Dutch and African ancestors, including Tom,
a West African-born man who served as a private for Captain John Spoor's
company in 1780; that service likely won him his freedom. According to DuBois,
several of his maternal ancestors were notably involved in regional history.
Alfred DuBois,
from Haiti, was of French Huguenot and African descent. His grandfather was Dr.
James DuBois of Poughkeepsie, New York. Dr. DuBois' family was rewarded
extensive land ownership in the Bahamas for its support of King George III
during the American Revolution. On Long Cay, Bahamas, James DuBois fathered
several children with slave mistresses. It is unknown how Alfred DuBois and
Mary Silvina Burghardt met, but they married on February 5, 1867 in Housatonic,
MA.
Du Bois was
married twice: first to Nina Gomer DuBois (m. 1896, d. 1950) with whom he had
two children, Burghardt (who died as a baby) and Yolande; then to the author,
playwright, composer, and activist Shirley Graham DuBois (m. 1951) with whom he
immigrated to Ghana.
University education
In 1888 DuBois
earned a degree from Fisk University, a historically black college in
Nashville, TN. Having received a $250 scholarship, he entered Harvard College
in the fall of 1888 where he earned his B. A. cum laude in 1890; M. A., 1891; and Ph.D., 1895.
During the summer following graduation from Fisk, Du Bois managed the Fisk Glee
Club which was located at a grand luxury summer resort on Lake Minnetonka. The
resort was a favorite spot for vacationing wealthy American Southerners and
European royalty.
In 1892 he received
a stipend to attend the University of Berlin for graduate work. While a student
in Berlin, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. He came of age
intellectually in the German capital, while studying with some of the most
prominent social scientists, including Gustav von Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, and
Heinrich von Treitschke.
In 1895 DuBois
became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
After teaching at Wilberforce University in OH he worked at the University of
PA. He taught while researching for his study The Philadelphia Negro.
Next, he moved to Georgia where he established the Department of Social Work at
Atlanta-U (now Clark Atlanta University, Whitney M. Young school of Social
Work).
Writings
DuBois wrote some thirty-seven books,
including three major autobiographies and five novels. Among his most
significant works are: The Philadelphia Negro (1899); John Brown (1909); The Negro (1915) influenced the work of several
pioneering Africanist scholars; Black Reconstruction in America (1935); Black Folks: Then and Now
(1939); Color and Democracy (1945); and
Battle for
Peace: The Story of My 83rd Birthday (1952). In 1940, at Atlanta-U, DuBois founded Phylon magazine.
In 1946, he wrote The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part That Africa
Has Played in World History. He also helped establish four academic
journals.
Civil rights activism
DuBois was
the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist on behalf of
African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. In that capacity,
he was a cofounder (1905) of the Niagara Movement which became the NAAC. A contemporary
of Booker T. Washington, he carried on a dialogue with the educator about
segregation, political disfranchisement and ways to improve African American
life. He was labeled "The Father of Pan-Africanism." The alliance between
DuBois and another associate named Trotter was, however, short-lived, as they
had a dispute over whether or not white people should be included in the
organization and in the struggle for civil rights. The belief that they should,
led DuBois and a group of like-minded supporters in 1909 to establish the
NAACP.
Unlike
Booker T. Washington, who believed that unskilled blacks should focus on
economic self-betterment, and Marcus Garvey, who advocated a “back to Africa”
movement, DuBois demanded that African Americans should achieve not only economic
parity with whites in the United States but full and immediate civil and
political equality as well. Also, he introduced the concept of the “talented
tenth,” a black elite whose duty it was to better the lives of less fortunate
African Americans.
From 1897 to
1910, DuBois taught economics and history at Atlanta-U. In 1910 he founded and became
editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine –
the official and influential organ of NAACP – a position he held until 1934.
That year he resigned over the question of voluntary segregation, which he had
come to favor over integration, and returned to Atlanta-U 1934–44. His concern
for the liberation of blacks throughout the world led him to organize the first
(Paris, 1919) of several Pan-African Congresses. In 1945, at the historic Fifth
Congress which he helped organize in Manchester, England, he met with
prospective African leaders including Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. In 1961
he became a member of the American Communist party and, shortly thereafter,
renounced his American citizenship. In the last two years of his life, DuBois
lived in Ghana.
DuBois
thought blacks should seek higher education, preferably liberal arts. He also
believed blacks should challenge and question whites on all grounds. Booker T.
Washington, on the other hand, believed assimilating and fitting into
"American culture" was the best way for blacks to move up in society.
DuBois became increasingly estranged from Walter Francis White, the executive
secretary of the NAACP. He began to question the organization's opposition to
all racial segregation. DuBois thought that this policy undermined those black
institutions. He believed that such institutions should be defended and
improved rather than attacked as inferior. By the 1930s, the NAACP had become
more institutional and DuBois increasingly radical, sometimes at odds with
leaders such as Walter White and Roy Wilkins. In 1934, DuBois left the magazine
to return to teaching at Atlanta-U, after writing two essays published in the Crisis
suggesting that black separatism could be a useful economic strategy.
At its
inception, DuBois joined Alpha Phi Alpha which was the first intercollegiate
Greek-lettered fraternity established by African Americans; it had a civil
rights focus.
Religion
DuBois was
involved in religion and contributed to its sociological study. In the context
of the black community, he suggested that religion gives people strength and
pride; African Americans could derive comfort from one another by sharing their
common struggles and experiences. He also believed that religious organizations
serve as communal centres. In The
Philadelphia Negro, DuBois argued that blacks who attended church went for a social
gathering first and religion second; and that church “introduces the stranger
to the community, serving as a lyceum, library and lecture bureau—it is, in
fine, the central organ of the organized life of the American Negro.”
Masonic
Affiliations
Bro W. E. B.
DuBois was made a Prince Hall Freemason December 12, 1910 when initiated into
Widow Son Lodge #1, MWPHGL of CT at New Haven. According to information
gathered from "Great Black Men of
Masonry: Qualitative Black Achievers who were Freemasons” by Joseph Mason
Andrew Cox; 1987 ed., Dr W. E. B. DuBois
was a Thirty-Third Degree Mason, Ancient & Accepted Scottish of
Freemasonry, PHA, Southern Jurisdiction, USA.
Prince Hall
Freemasonry recognizes W. E. B. DuBois for his remarkably outstanding
contributions toward African-American achievements
In his capacity
of Deputy for the Orient of Europe, SGIG Andrew Morgan, 33º heads the Council
of Deliberation (COD), A.A.S.R., PHA, Northern Jurisdiction, U.S.A. Of the
seven Consistories within the Orient, W. E. B. DuBois Consistory #116 (named in honor of Ill. Bro W. E. B.
DuBois) is located in the Valley London, England, under the command of CIC GIG
Melvin L. Jackson, 33º, in association with GIG Dr William A. Hall, 33º,
Overseer of the Valley. The remaining six COD-Europe Consistories are: Spain
Military #99; Gustave M. Solomons #101; Eureka #113; Ararat #115; Booker T.
Alexander #117; and Karamursel #96, Turkey.
Honors &
Legacy
1958: awarded an
honorary doctoral degree from the University of Prague. His honorary
dissertation was titled The Negro and Communism.
1959: USSR awarded him the International Lenin
Peace Prize.
W.E.B. DuBois Memorial Centre: On his death in 1963, the Ghanaian government honored DuBois with a
state funeral; his coffin was carried on a gun-carriage in a ceremony held in Accra. His remains were kept at Christiansborg
Castle until 1985
when Ghana's leader J.J. Rawlings opened
DuBois' former residence as a memorial centre; he was re-interred with the remains of
his second wife, Shirley Graham DuBois. The W.E.B. DuBois Memorial Centre is
located in the Cantonments district of Accra; visitors can view personal effects and photographs of Du Bois and visit
his grave.
1992: United States Postal Service honored W. E. B. DuBois with his portrait on a postage
stamp.
October 5, 1994: main
library at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst was named after him.
Dormitory: named
after DuBois at the University of Pennsylvania where he conducted field research for his sociological study "The
Philadelphia Negro."
Africana: The Encyclopaedia of African and African-American Experience was inspired by and dedicated to W. E.
B. DuBois by its editors Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.
DuBois lectures: held
monthly at Humboldt-University Berlin.
2002: scholar Molefi Kete
Asante listed W. E.
B. DuBois on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.
Death
DuBois was
invited to Ghana in 1961 by President Kwame Nkrumah to direct the Encyclopaedia
Africana – a government
production, and long-held dream of his. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley
Graham DuBois, became
citizens of Ghana. Contrary to some opinions, it is reported that he never
renounced his US citizenship, even when
denied a passport to travel to Ghana. DuBois' health had declined in 1962, and
on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana, at the age
of ninety-five, a day before Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a
Dream"
speech. At the March on Washington, Roy Wilkins informed the hundreds of thousands of
marchers and called for a moment of silence.
May light perpetual continue to shine upon Ill. Bro W. E. B. DuBois in
his eternal heavenly abode!
W.E.B. Du Bois Biographylliam Edward Burghardt Du Bois
( 1868 – 1963 )
William Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963)
DuBois was an American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author and editor. At the age of 95, in 1963, he became a naturalized citizen of Ghana. Historian David Levering Lewis wrote, "In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. DuBois pursued virtually every possible avenue to solve the problems of twentieth-century racism.
Family history
William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born on February 23, 1868, to Alfred DuBois and Mary Silvina Burghardt DuBois in Great Barrington (MA) - an overwhelmingly white community where he grew up. Mary Silvina Burghardt's family was part of the very small free black population there, having long owned land in the state. Their family descended from Dutch and African ancestors, including Tom, a West African-born man who served as a private for Captain John Spoor's company in 1780; that service likely won him his freedom. According to DuBois, several of his maternal ancestors were notably involved in regional history.
Alfred DuBois, from Haiti, was of French Huguenot and African descent. His grandfather was Dr. James DuBois of Poughkeepsie, New York. Dr. DuBois' family was rewarded extensive land ownership in the Bahamas for its support of King George III during the American Revolution. On Long Cay, Bahamas, James DuBois fathered several children with slave mistresses. It is unknown how Alfred DuBois and Mary Silvina Burghardt met, but they married on February 5, 1867 in Housatonic, MA.
Du Bois was married twice: first to Nina Gomer DuBois (m. 1896, d. 1950) with whom he had two children, Burghardt (who died as a baby) and Yolande; then to the author, playwright, composer, and activist Shirley Graham DuBois (m. 1951) with whom he immigrated to Ghana.
University education
In 1888 DuBois earned a degree from Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, TN. Having received a $250 scholarship, he entered Harvard College in the fall of 1888 where he earned his B. A. cum laude in 1890; M. A., 1891; and Ph.D., 1895. During the summer following graduation from Fisk, Du Bois managed the Fisk Glee Club which was located at a grand luxury summer resort on Lake Minnetonka. The resort was a favorite spot for vacationing wealthy American Southerners and European royalty.
In 1892 he received a stipend to attend the University of Berlin for graduate work. While a student in Berlin, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. He came of age intellectually in the German capital, while studying with some of the most prominent social scientists, including Gustav von Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, and Heinrich von Treitschke.
In 1895 DuBois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After teaching at Wilberforce University in OH he worked at the University of PA. He taught while researching for his study The Philadelphia Negro. Next, he moved to Georgia where he established the Department of Social Work at Atlanta-U (now Clark Atlanta University, Whitney M. Young school of Social Work).
Writings
DuBois wrote some thirty-seven books, including three major autobiographies and five novels. Among his most significant works are: The Philadelphia Negro (1899); John Brown (1909); The Negro (1915) influenced the work of several pioneering Africanist scholars; Black Reconstruction in America (1935); Black Folks: Then and Now (1939); Color and Democracy (1945); and Battle for Peace: The Story of My 83rd Birthday (1952). In 1940, at Atlanta-U, DuBois founded Phylon magazine. In 1946, he wrote The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part That Africa Has Played in World History. He also helped establish four academic journals.
Civil rights activism
DuBois was the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist on behalf of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. In that capacity, he was a cofounder (1905) of the Niagara Movement which became the NAAC. A contemporary of Booker T. Washington, he carried on a dialogue with the educator about segregation, political disfranchisement and ways to improve African American life. He was labeled "The Father of Pan-Africanism." The alliance between DuBois and another associate named Trotter was, however, short-lived, as they had a dispute over whether or not white people should be included in the organization and in the struggle for civil rights. The belief that they should, led DuBois and a group of like-minded supporters in 1909 to establish the NAACP.
Unlike Booker T. Washington, who believed that unskilled blacks should focus on economic self-betterment, and Marcus Garvey, who advocated a “back to Africa” movement, DuBois demanded that African Americans should achieve not only economic parity with whites in the United States but full and immediate civil and political equality as well. Also, he introduced the concept of the “talented tenth,” a black elite whose duty it was to better the lives of less fortunate African Americans.
From 1897 to 1910, DuBois taught economics and history at Atlanta-U. In 1910 he founded and became editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine – the official and influential organ of NAACP – a position he held until 1934. That year he resigned over the question of voluntary segregation, which he had come to favor over integration, and returned to Atlanta-U 1934–44. His concern for the liberation of blacks throughout the world led him to organize the first (Paris, 1919) of several Pan-African Congresses. In 1945, at the historic Fifth Congress which he helped organize in Manchester, England, he met with prospective African leaders including Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. In 1961 he became a member of the American Communist party and, shortly thereafter, renounced his American citizenship. In the last two years of his life, DuBois lived in Ghana.
DuBois thought blacks should seek higher education, preferably liberal arts. He also believed blacks should challenge and question whites on all grounds. Booker T. Washington, on the other hand, believed assimilating and fitting into "American culture" was the best way for blacks to move up in society. DuBois became increasingly estranged from Walter Francis White, the executive secretary of the NAACP. He began to question the organization's opposition to all racial segregation. DuBois thought that this policy undermined those black institutions. He believed that such institutions should be defended and improved rather than attacked as inferior. By the 1930s, the NAACP had become more institutional and DuBois increasingly radical, sometimes at odds with leaders such as Walter White and Roy Wilkins. In 1934, DuBois left the magazine to return to teaching at Atlanta-U, after writing two essays published in the Crisis suggesting that black separatism could be a useful economic strategy.
At its inception, DuBois joined Alpha Phi Alpha which was the first intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity established by African Americans; it had a civil rights focus.
Religion
DuBois was involved in religion and contributed to its sociological study. In the context of the black community, he suggested that religion gives people strength and pride; African Americans could derive comfort from one another by sharing their common struggles and experiences. He also believed that religious organizations serve as communal centres. In The Philadelphia Negro, DuBois argued that blacks who attended church went for a social gathering first and religion second; and that church “introduces the stranger to the community, serving as a lyceum, library and lecture bureau—it is, in fine, the central organ of the organized life of the American Negro.”
Masonic Affiliations
Bro W. E. B. DuBois was made a Prince Hall Freemason December 12, 1910 when initiated into Widow Son Lodge #1, MWPHGL of CT at New Haven. According to information gathered from "Great Black Men of Masonry: Qualitative Black Achievers who were Freemasons” by Joseph Mason Andrew Cox; 1987 ed., Dr W. E. B. DuBois was a Thirty-Third Degree Mason, Ancient & Accepted Scottish of Freemasonry, PHA, Southern Jurisdiction, USA.
Prince Hall Freemasonry recognizes W. E. B. DuBois for his remarkably outstanding contributions toward African-American achievements
In his capacity of Deputy for the Orient of Europe, SGIG Andrew Morgan, 33º heads the Council of Deliberation (COD), A.A.S.R., PHA, Northern Jurisdiction, U.S.A. Of the seven Consistories within the Orient, W. E. B. DuBois Consistory #116 (named in honor of Ill. Bro W. E. B. DuBois) is located in the Valley London, England, under the command of CIC GIG Melvin L. Jackson, 33º, in association with GIG Dr William A. Hall, 33º, Overseer of the Valley. The remaining six COD-Europe Consistories are: Spain Military #99; Gustave M. Solomons #101; Eureka #113; Ararat #115; Booker T. Alexander #117; and Karamursel #96, Turkey.
Honors & Legacy
1958: awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Prague. His honorary dissertation was titled The Negro and Communism.
1959: USSR awarded him the International Lenin Peace Prize.
W.E.B. DuBois Memorial Centre: On his death in 1963, the Ghanaian government honored DuBois with a state funeral; his coffin was carried on a gun-carriage in a ceremony held in Accra. His remains were kept at Christiansborg Castle until 1985 when Ghana's leader J.J. Rawlings opened DuBois' former residence as a memorial centre; he was re-interred with the remains of his second wife, Shirley Graham DuBois. The W.E.B. DuBois Memorial Centre is located in the Cantonments district of Accra; visitors can view personal effects and photographs of Du Bois and visit his grave.
1992: United States Postal Service honored W. E. B. DuBois with his portrait on a postage stamp.
October 5, 1994: main library at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst was named after him.
Dormitory: named after DuBois at the University of Pennsylvania where he conducted field research for his sociological study "The Philadelphia Negro."
Africana: The Encyclopaedia of African and African-American Experience was inspired by and dedicated to W. E. B. DuBois by its editors Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
DuBois lectures: held monthly at Humboldt-University Berlin.
2002: scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed W. E. B. DuBois on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.
Death
DuBois was invited to Ghana in 1961 by President Kwame Nkrumah to direct the Encyclopaedia Africana – a government production, and long-held dream of his. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley Graham DuBois, became citizens of Ghana. Contrary to some opinions, it is reported that he never renounced his US citizenship, even when denied a passport to travel to Ghana. DuBois' health had declined in 1962, and on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana, at the age of ninety-five, a day before Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech. At the March on Washington, Roy Wilkins informed the hundreds of thousands of marchers and called for a moment of silence.
May light perpetual continue to shine upon Ill. Bro W. E. B. DuBois in his eternal heavenly abode!
