W. E. B. Du Bois Educational Posters, Books, Links for Learning

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W. E. B. DuBois, Photographic Print

Selection of W. E. B. DuBois, African American scholar, civil rights activist, and educator; posters, prints and charts chosen for the social studies and language arts classrooms, homeschoolers and for theme decor for office or studio. The Creative Process W. E. B. DuBois gallery includes images in the Great Black Americans, Black History Biographical Timeline, America in the 20th Century, the Civil Rights series, and an ecard with quote from W. E. B. DuBois.

	• W. E. B. Du BOIS POSTERS Celebrate Black History
	Cost of Liberty Art Print Cost of Liberty Art Print “The cost of liberty is less than the cost of repression.” W. E. B. Du Bois
	America in the 20th Century - The Progressive Era America in the 20th Century - The Progressive Era Wall Poster • more America in the 20th Century posters
	14 Leaders Art Print Fourteen Leaders Art Print • who is in this poster? Mary McLeod Bethune George Washington Carver W. E. B. duBois Frederick Douglass Martin Luther King Thurgood Marshall Elijah Muhammad Adam Clayton Powell Sojourner Truth Harriet Tubman Booker T. Washington Malcolm X
	Civil Rights 1865 - 1920 Poster The Struggle for Civil Rights 1865 - 1920 Poster The end of the Civil War brought freedom and hope to former slaves throughout the South. No longer would they live in chains and in fear of their master's whips. But for far too many former slaves this joy did not last long. The chains and whips were soon replaced by less noticable but equally demeaning forms of oppression. Most blacks continued to work in the fields of white landowners. Slave codes which had kept slaves from moving about freely and from receiving an education, were replaced by equally harsh "black codes". But in their daily lives, blacks made communities and worked to make their lives better. For a time, the federal government helped – by setting up thousands of all-black schools and by protecting the right of blacks to vote. This helped a number of black men win elections to state legislatures and to Congress. But this taste of power was short lived. After the 1870s the federal government in the South much less protection. Soon, governments in the South put in place special voting restriction and harsh new forms of segretation – or "Jim Crow" laws. Lynching and other forms of terror became all too common in the South. Around the time of World War I, new opportunities led many blacks to look to the North as the place where their dreams might be fulfilled. And a few, such as began to organize blacks for a long struggle against racial prejudice and discrimination. Individuals on poster - Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida E. Wells, George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute, Scott Joplin, Granville Woods, Robert Smalls, Early African American members of Congress - Senator Hiram R. Revels and Representatives Benjamin S. Turner, Josiah T. Walls, Joseph H. Rainey, Robert Brown Elliot, Robert D. De Large, and Jefferson H. Long. • more Civil Rights History posters
	W. E. B. DuBois Black History Biographical Timeline Poster no longer available W. E. B. DuBois Black History Biographical Timeline Fine Art Poster “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” A noted scholar, writer, educator, and activist, W. E. B. Dubois devoted his life to studying and addressing the social and economic condition of black people. He was admired by his contemporaries for fighting injustice and defending freedom. • more Black History Biographical Timeline posters
	• more Black History Posters • more educators posters

“The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.”
W. E. B. DuBois
b. 2-23-1868; Great Barrington, MA
d. 8-27-1963

“There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.”

William Edward Burghardt DuBois, one of the most influential black leaders of the first half of the 20th Century, was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to Mary Silvina and Alfred Du Bois.

He was a brilliant student and upon graduating from high school enrolled in Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Raised in an environment where sutble racism had already formed him into a introspective person, his university experience exposed him to blatant discrimination and reinforced his determination to free his people.

After graduation from Fisk, Dubois was able to attend Harvard University, graduating with a Master’s degree in 1891. Angered by ex-president Rutherford B. Hayes assertion that he couldn’t find a worthy student to take advantage of a fund to educate Negroes, DuBois applied directly to Hayes. DuBois received the grant and chose to study for his doctorate degree in Germany at the University of Berlin. His PhD was finally awarded from Harvard however because the committee overseeing the grant thought what he was studying was not what the Negro needed. His doctoral thesis is The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America.

DuBois became known as the father of Social Science with of his exhaustive ?historical investigation, statistical and anthropological measurement, and sociological interpretation of a research project in a Philadelphia slum. He continued his work in Atlanta, Georgia.

A personal battle between DuBois and Booker T. Washington developed over ideological differences and ways of achieving equality for blacks. DuBois’ 1903 book The Souls of Black Folks, cemented the rift. He also had differences with Marcus Garvey. DuBois’ intellectual approach was in direct opposition to Garvey’s flamboyance.

DuBois was one of twenty nine men who formed the Niagara Movement which eventually merged with white liberals to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He used his position as Director of Publications and Research to initiate actions he felt would improve conditions for blacks, which were not the position of the NAACP leadership.

DuBois was also an associate consultant to the American delegation at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. He foresaw the organization could be dominated by imperialist nations and did not intend to intervene on the behalf of colonized countries.

Prophetically he saw the world with a “new colonialism with the same old human slavery, which once ruined us, to a third world war, which will ruin the world” and he also called for the outlawing of nuclear weapons.

DuBois eventually became disillusioned with the United States and chose to give up his citizenship. He died at the age of 95 on August 27, 1963, the eve of the March On Washington, in Accra, Ghana, shortly after becoming a Ghanan citizen.

Books/video by and about W. E. B. DuBois

The Philadelphia Negro by W. E. B. Dubois - Originally published in 1899, this is one of the first works to combine the use of urban ethnography, social history, and descriptive statistics. The issues the book raises and the evolution of DuBois's own thinking about the problems of black integration into American society sound strikingly contemporary. This book has become a classic work in social science literature. [book description]

The Souls of Black Folk by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual “sorrow songs” that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in “On Booker T. Washington and Others,” where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary’s rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: “Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races,” he writes, further complaining that Washington’s thinking “withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens.” The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois’ haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche’s “double consciousness,” which he described as “a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois’ commitment and foresight – and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem – black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. [book description]

W. E. B. DuBois, Race and the City: The Philadelphia Negro and Its Legacy - Centennial look at The Philadephia Negro by Dubois.

Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery (1998 VHS) - groundbreaking six hour series of surprising revelations, dramatic recreations, rare archival photography and riveting first-person accounts. Africans in America helps define the reality of slavery’s past through the insightful commentary of a wide range of voices, including General Colin Powell and leading scholars, and offers unparalleled understanding - from slavery’s birth in the early 1600s through the violent onset of civil war in 1860. Narrated by Angela Bassett; includes the voices of William Hurt and Andre Braugher. Winner 1998 Peabody Award.

LINKS FOR LEARNING : W. E. B. DuBois

• FBI Freedom of Information : W. E. B. DuBois
• W. E. B. duBois Bio from African American History of W. New York State
• W. E. B. Du Bois Learning Center
• W. E. B. Du Bois: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
• American Writers: Washington and Du Bois Video Lesson Plan