Who cares about W. E. B. Du Bois?
When you think about Civil Rights or race relations, your mind probably drifts to the psychedelic era of the Sixties with MLK, the March on Washington, and all that jazz, but what if I told you the history of Civil Rights goes further back than that? Before there was Dr. King or the era of protest, there was a man named W. E. B. Du Bois, for which, we must go all the way back to the start of the 20th century.
The founder for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, a legal association that would take up cases on the behalf of African-Americans whose rights had been violated, as well as to fight against the cultural ideas that were widely accepted at the time. It was made up of a wide variety of people, including educated blacks, whites, socialists and many others. A prime example of some of the NAACP’s work in the cultural arena was to organize boycotts of the blockbuster hit film of the early 20th century, The Birth of a Nation. It had very racist overtones in its message, and was held in high esteem by the KKK, but not just them. This film was everywhere in pop culture for an American living at this time. It was so popular, even Woodrow Wilson had a private screening in the White House. On the more legal front, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund financed legal teams across the U.S., including the first legal case of the NAACP, Pink Franklin, an African-American sharecropper living in South Carolina, who shot and killed a police officer who entered his house, armed, without stating his purpose. [1]
Another method preferred by Du Bois is sociological research. He did a study on the Philadelphia area in his work The Philadelphia Negro, in which he documents the various jobs, economic conditions, education opportunities and levels, marriage, sex, community structures, etc.
Du Bois did so in order to show that the primary reason for African-Americans being in the state that they were was not due to their color making them inferior, but was in fact due to the racism in Philadelphia that held them back and the history of African-American oppression in America. His research found that the thing holding back black Americans was that they weren’t considered worthy of being helped. Even though many other ethnic groups had been in similar, if not worse conditions of what Du Bois calls “ignorance” and “crime,” for some reason, blacks were seen as not worth the effort of being helped, but were, instead restricted and segregated. In stating this, he also offered a solution in which both black people and white people would help. For African-Americans, he said that their job was to ensure the success of their children by striving for educational opportunities for them by sending them to school, and to save money and open bank accounts. He also addressed the upper-class black people by charging them to help lift up other African-Americans and to not forget that they are all in the same boat. The duties he stated for whites were to leave their deep-seated racist views. He tells whites to cooperate freely to lift black people up by offering them better job, political, and social opportunities. The audience for The Philadelphia Negro was richer, educated blacks and whites in the University of Pennsylvania. [2]
He was also the editor for the Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, a newspaper put out by the NAACP that reported on racial news, politics, religious movements, and literature. It marketed itself to upper-class African-Americans, due to what kind of material it covered. The ideas covered by Crisis were those of an educated, politically involved nature. They had information on racial lynchings and trials, as well as black political news. It was considered radical among some whites, and hated among some state governments. Not only this, the Crisis was a path through which black artists could practice their skills, like literature, poetry, and art. Through this, we can assume that the primary audience that Du Bois appealed to at this time was wealthier, more educated black people, and the reason for this is the legal system was most understood by those of higher education. It was very flowery in its style and often had advertisements for things that would only appeal to richer people, such as beauty products (hair “straightener” powder, makeup, etc.). These would only be appreciated by a richer audience, because in order to be more “acceptable,” wealthier blacks would use the powder to make their hair look straighter or “white.” The makeup was to appear lighter or fairer. [3] [4]
The Civil Rights movement wasn’t built in a day, and Du Bois and his audience were critical in shaping the foundation.
Citations:
Detweiler, Fredrick German. Negro Press in the United States. Chicago, Ill. The University Press, 1922. https://archive.org/details/negropressinunit00detwuoft/page/n9.
- “Founding and Early Years of the NAACP.” Library of Congress, n.d.
- Du Bois, W. E. B, The Philadelphia Negro; a Social Study. Together with a Special Report on Domestic Service, by Isabel Eaton. Benjamin Boom, Inc., 1899.
- Digby-Junger, Richard. “The Guardian, Crisis, Messenger, and Negro World: The Early-20th-Century Black Radical Press.” Howard Journal of Communications 9, no. 3 (September 1998): 263 — 82. http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=13caca7d-4eb3-4d6d-a9da-b82d2c75b325%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=3969735&db=cax.
- Du Bois, W. E. B. “Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races.” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, November 1910, 1 edition. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive?p_action=search.
