Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 23, 2012



W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was an American civil rights activist, author, and editor. After graduating from Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois, one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize efforts to free African colonies from European powers. Du Bois wrote several seminal essays and treatises, and published many influential pieces in his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death. (more...)

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