Dr. Dubois Dead at 95 Washington Afro-American, Aug. 31, 1963 ACCRA, Ghana - Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, eminent scholar and statesman, died here Tuesday night. The Government of Ghana in making the announcement, gave no cause of death.
Death claimed Dr. DuBois, 95, on the eve of perhaps the colored American’s finest hour in history, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which attracted over 241,000.
One of the founders of the NAACP, he founded and edited the association’s ''Crisis'' magazine from 1910 - 34. His life was a history of protest filled with controversy, in the fight for human rights.
Although accused of being a communist for years, Dr. DuBois didn’t join the Communist Party until two years ago after settling in Ghana. He became a citizen of the young republic earlier this year.
The statesman -noted as a historian, an author and sociologist - came to Ghana at the request of the government in 1960 to direct the compiling of ''Encyclopedia Africana.''
In his application for membership in the communist Party, Dr. DuBois apologized ''for having waited so long.'' He said he had concluded ''capitalism cannot reform itself, it is doomed.'' The world famous scholar, a native of Great Barrington, Mass., was one of five founders of the NAACP but his views twice caused him to split with the organization.
He first quit the association in 1934 in a policy dispute. He opposed the organization’s advocacy for all desegregation. He returned to the NAACP in 1944 to direct special research but split with the association again in 1948.
Dr. DuBois, awarded the Lenin Prize by Moscow in 1959 ''for strengthening peace, had been associated with left-wing causes since his last split with the NAACP.
But it wasn’t until Oct. 1, 1962, that he officially applied for membership in the Communist Party. The party acted on the scholar’s application Oct. 13, 1961, Gus Hall, national secretary reported. After graduating from high school in Great Barrington in 1884, four years later he graduated from Fisk University and enrolled at Harvard University as a junior.
In 1890 he graduated from Harvard, cum laude, in a class of 300. He was one of six commencement speakers and the title of his address was ''Jefferson Davis: Representative of Civilization.''
Two years later he wrangled a Slater Fund Fellowship for study in German by persistent pressure through Ex-President Hayes.
And it was in 1896 that he became the first of his race to win a Ph.D. at Harvard. His thesis, ''Suppression of African Slave Trade to America.'' was published as volume 1 of the university’s historical series. The scholar launched his career as a teacher at Wilberforce (Ohio) University in 1894 and started a faculty war when the school graduated a student that Lt. Charles Young flunked in military science.
He was an assistant instructor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 when he made his first scientific study of colored people. The following year he joined the Atlanta University faculty.
It was here that he began a scientific study of the problems of colored Americans. These studies continued for 13 years and were published in several volumes.
For 25 years ''Atlanta University’s Studies of Negro Problems'' were the only reference work of its kind. Dr. DuBois wrote 18 books and numerous poems. He was the first of his race elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters for the Advancement of Science.
Much of his long life Dr. DuBois lived in Brooklyn, N. Y. and Baltimore where he maintained a residence from the late 1930s until he went to Ghana.
A daughter, Mrs. Yolanda DuBois Williams, taught in the Baltimore public school system for almost 40 years before her heath.
A world traveler, Dr. DuBois was active in the Niagra Movement, a forerunner of the NAACP and the Pan African Conference. A Baltimore literary group founded the DuBois Circle in 1906.
His first wife, Mrs. Nina Gomer DuBois, died in 1950. He married Mrs. Shirley Graham, an author, in 1951.
Also surviving him are a grandchild, Mrs. Yolanda DuBois Peck of New York: two great grandsons, and a cousin, Mrs. Edythe Myers of Baltimore.
1955 - Emmett Till Killed in Mississippi In one of the defining events in the struggle for civil rights in America, 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was killed by racists while visiting relatives in Mississippi.
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