
W.E.B. Du Bois
(1868 - 1963)
W.E.B. Du Bois studied with William James at Harvard University, receiving his PhD in 1895 and publishing his dissertation, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America,” the following year. Helping to form the NAACP in 1909, he became the organization’s director of research and the founding editor of its magazine, The Crisis, where he served for twenty-four years, publishing the writing of, among others, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen. He became a consultant to the UN founding convention in 1945. A committed socialist, he was arrested in 1951 on suspicion of being a foreign-government agent. From 1952 to 1958, the State Department held his passport; he immigrated to Ghana in 1961 at the behest of its president.