William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, 1868-1963, was a Renaissance man. He made history when he became one of the first Black men in America to win a PhD from Harvard University in 1895, but this was just the beginning. He went on to work for citizenship rights for Black Americans, for Africans throughout the then colonized world, and for all whom he called the darker races. He’s perhaps best known today for his now classic, The Souls of Black Folk, a beautifully written collection of essays, poems, odes, and autobiographical prose that tells the story of Black Americans of the period. He’s an eloquent, elegant advocate for people who have just left slavery and are facing repression, peonage, and death. He is thus a powerful spokesman for education for a people for whom literacy was once a crime punishable by death.
He was one of the co-founders of the NAACP and wrote scathing editorials for the organization’s journal, The Crisis, for 28 years. His outspokenness and growing radicalism earned him expulsion from the group he helped found, but it didn’t stop his work. Yet, he remained as radical as eve and just as outspoken. In 1960, several years after the Eisenhower presidential elections, Du Bois condemned the millions of dollars spent to fund the effort for commercials to sow fear and unease in the electorate. Decades before the Occupy movement, he would criticize U.S. rulers as “instead of being individuals are organized corporations who suppress freedom by monopolizing wealth.” He fought for 45 years for African freedom and independence. In 1963 he traded his U.S. citizenship to become a citizen of the West African nation of Ghana. W.E.B. DuBois, a fighter for freedom, remembered this Black History Month, and forever. From in prison nation. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
