W.E.B. DuBois Returns to Harvard
On this day in 1904, W.E.B. DuBois gave a lecture on "the race question" at Harvard, where nine years before he had been the first black person to receive a Ph.D. From his childhood in Great Barrington, where he was relatively sheltered from racism, to his old age in Africa, where he moved to escape it, DuBois devoted his energies and talents to helping his fellow African Americans gain political and economic power. Founder of the NAACP, he later became more militant than most of its members. His involvement in the Pan-African Movement led him to support African independence. He moved to Ghana in his 90s and died there on August 27, 1963, the very eve of the historic civil rights march on Washington.
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