The Legacy of W.E.B. Dubois

Dr. W.E.B. Dubois’ legacy as scholar and public intellectual has stood for well over a century. His sociological research, books, and writings on historic African civilization’s intersection with white colonialism and the forces that shape African American culture, socioeconomic status, and well being are foundational to understanding race relations in America and beyond its borders. As a proud alumnus of an HBCU – a graduate of Fisk University – Dubois wrote often on the subject of Black Art and art’s role and influence in the formation of distinct cultural identity used as a means and conduit for intellectual and aesthetic development amongst people – a concept that helped frame the notion of  a “Black Arts Movement” and influenced Black cultural production and inspired the evolution of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1903 he wrote his classic treatise on the impact of the unique arts that flow from Black cultural creativity; the book entitled The Souls of Black Folks. W.E.B. Dubois is the first African American to receive a doctorate degree from Harvard University, and he was one of the organizing founders of the NAACP. A staunch critic of American racism, Dubois came under scrutiny of the infamous McCarthy hearings convened by Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities held during the Cold War era of intense “Red Scare” ferver sought to suppress all political dissent by labeling human rights advocates as Communists and Anti-American. The careers of numerous American artists, actors, social activists, and scholars were censured, black-balled and sullied irreparably from typically unfounded inferences of Communist party affiliation leveled by the McCarthy-led HUAAC.

Dubois eventually did embrace Communism. In his later life he expatriated and became a proud venerated citizen of Ghana, where he lived a productive scholarly life and and is memorialized with a life-sized bronze statue in honor to his immense contributions advancing freedom, equality and world peace.

In his extraordinary, if neglected, book The World and Africa, W.E.B. Du Bois details a history of Africa before European exploration, the enslavement of tens of millions, and the imposition of colonialism. In so doing, he assembles a compendium of the continent’s contributions to human development, its role in shaping the histories of Europe and Asia, as well as the diversity of its languages, cultures, and peoples.