Du Bois at his 70th Birthday dinner
Atlanta University, 1938 Since 1972, the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies has conducted a wide-ranging undergraduate program that combines scholarship across a range of disciplines with social commitment in a way that seeks to carry on these two major components of Dr. Du Bois' legacy. Now, the department has embarked upon a historic and innovative doctoral program that will undertake to produce future scholars in the Du Bois mode. With access to the major archival holdings of Du Bois' papers and the Horace Mann Bond Collection, the department is poised to become a major international center of research and scholarship in Afro-American Studies.

When the department was established in 1969, it chose the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, a native of western Massachusetts, because he believed that awareness of Black history and culture should constitute part of the education of every American; because he personally embarked on a lifetime of scholarship about Africa, African-Americans and the African diaspora; and because his words spoke eloquently about potential for African-Americans.