WEB Du Bois is Born
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, largely known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on 23 February 1868 and became an American sociologist, an ardent socialist, a historian, and a Pan-Africanist revolutionary activist. He was one of the founders of the United States’ National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois used his position in the NAACP to respond to racist incidents that occurred in the United States.
After the First World War, he attended the Pan-African Congresses, which championed the objective for decolonisation in Africa and in the West Indies, and made a significant advance for the Pan-African cause.
One of the Pan-Africanists’ major demands was to end colonial rule and racial discrimination. It stood against imperialism, and it demanded human rights and equality of economic opportunity. The manifesto given by the Pan-African Congress included the political and economic demands of the Congress for a new world system of international cooperation and the need to address the issues facing Africa as a result of European colonisation of most of the continent.
As a professor at Atlanta University, Du Bois primarily targeted racism with his writing, which protested strongly against lynching, Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination in important social institutions. His cause included people of colour everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians who suffered under the yoke of colonialism. He was a proponen
