W.E.B. Du Bois’ Childhood
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, Du Bois’ birth certificate has his name as “William E. Duboise.” Two years after his birth his father, Alfred Du Bois, left his mother, Mary Silvina Burghardt.
Du Bois became the first person in his extended family to attend high school, and did so at his mother’s insistence. In 1883, Du Bois began to write articles for papers like the New York Globe and the Freeman.
Education of W.E.B. Dubois
Du Bois initially attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, a school for Black students. His tuition was paid by several churches in Great Barrington. Du Bois became an editor for the Herald, the student magazine.
After graduation, Du Bois attended Harvard University, starting in 1888 and eventually receiving advanced degrees in history. In 1892, Du Bois worked towards a Ph.D. at the University of Berlin until his funding ran out.
He returned to the United States without his doctorate but later received one from Harvard while teaching classics at Wilberforce University in Ohio. There, he married Nina Gomer, one of his students, in 1896.
His doctoral thesis, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870,” became his first book and a standard in American education covering slavery.
The Philadelphia Negro
Du Bois took a position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 conducting a study of the city’s Seventh Ward, published in 1899 as The Philadelphia Negro. The work took up so much of his time that he missed the birth of his first son in Great Barrington.
The study is considered one of the earliest examples of statistical work being used for sociological purposes, with extensive fieldwork resulting in hundreds of interviews conducted door-to-door by Du Bois.
Mapping out the Seventh Ward and carefully documenting familial and work structures, Du Bois concluded that the Black community’s greatest challenges were poverty, crime, lack of education and distrust of those outside the community.
W.E.B. Du Bois’ Sociological Studies
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics offered Du Bois a job in 1897, leading to several groundbreaking studies on Black Southern households in Farmville, Virginia, that uncovered how slavery still affected the personal lives of African Americans. Du Bois would do four more studies for the bureau, two in Alabama and two in Georgia.
These studies were considered radical at the time when sociology existed in pure theoretical forms. Du Bois was pivotal in making investigation and data analysis crucial to sociological study.
During the same period, Du Bois wrote “The Strivings of the Negro People” for the Atlantic Monthly, a groundbreaking essay that explained to white readers how it feels to be a victim of racism. It is considered the general public’s introduction to Du Bois.
'The Souls of Black Folk'
Du Bois and family moved to Atlanta University, where he taught sociology and worked on his additional Bureau of Labor Statistics studies.
Among the books written during this period was The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of sociological essays examining the Black experience in America. Partially derived from his Atlantic article, it embraced Du Bois’ personal history in his arguments.
The book also introduced the idea of “double consciousness,” in which African Americans are required to consider not only their view of themselves but also the view that the world, particularly whites, has on them during all parts of life. It also expressly differentiated Du Bois from more conservative Black voices like Booker T. Washington.
In 1899, Du Bois’ son Burghardt contracted diphtheria and died after Du Bois spent the night looking for one of three Black doctors in Atlanta, since no white doctor would treat the child. A resulting essay, “The Passing of the First Born,” appeared in The Souls of Black Folk.
