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W.E.B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. As a sociologist, he focused on the problem of race for blacks in the United States. He became an influential leader of black Americans, presenting an alternative to Booker T. Washington, whose policies Du Bois considered too conservative and too accommodating to whites. Du Bois, believing that blacks could achieve progress only through protest, encouraged black nationalism and supported Pan-Africanism. Du Bois also founded the Niagara Movement, served as the NAACP’s director of research and editor of its magazine Crisis, and taught and published his philosophy at Atlanta University. W.E.B. Du Bois died at the age of 95 in 1963.

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