
The following essays were selected to provide an introduction to Du Bois' writing and to the fundamental issues confronting the United States, the reality, the potential, and the obstacles. Together, they demonstrate, as Du Bois wrote, that the problem of the twentieth century was indeed the problem of the color line.
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Selected essays of W.E.B. Du Bois
Access to fair and equal education remains one of the most pressing issues of our time. While today, all children are required to attend school in the United States, this is not the case in all societies. In many countries, education is not a childhood right but a privilege, reserved only for the social elite. In many cases, some children are segregated out by class, race, caste, or sex as unworthy for education and excluded them from the educational system.
W. E. B. Du Bois was a highly educated man. The valedictorian of his high school class, Du Bois enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville at sixteen and later became the first black man to receive a doctorate at Harvard. Du Bois recognized the value of his education and saw it as a priceless gift and, like many social reformers, a way to abate the effects of the oppression of minorities in the United States and to allow people to rise up and claim their rightful place in American society.
Early in the twentieth century, Du Bois argued that American society could and would be changed if fair and equal education were available. But Du Bois, the social critic, was well aware that in many parts of the country, particularly the south, education was neither fair nor equal for African Americans, women, or the poor. More controversially, Du Bois criticized the vocational and technical curriculum favored by his Booker T. Washington, his rival and one of America's best known black leaders. Only through an academic curriculum, Du Bois argued, could true racial empowerment be achieved. Without complete intellectual equality, true social equality would never become a reality.
W.E.B Du Bois' ideas on the connections between education and social equality were revolutionary for his time. He knew there would be no easy solution to the social inequality of the early 1900s, but he was willing to try in order to ensure the success and equality of future generations.
In the United States, the right to vote is often taken for granted and for many years, turnout at all but the most highly contested elections has been dismal. Too many Americans forget, however, that the extension of votes to women, African Americans, and (to some degree) poor whites is a relatively recent phenomenon and was won only through concerted struggle. Even today, the struggle to maintain the right to vote is necessary.
Du Bois recognized the power of the ballot box and used the vote as a centerpiece of his plans to bring about social reform and racial equality in the United States. In his early writings, change and equality are intrinsically intertwined, and are only achievable through the extension of the suffrage to every American citizen, regardless of age, race, or sex. Du Bois is persistent in his beliefs that if one has the right to vote, one has the obligation to do so: voting to bring about social change is a civic responsibility, not a burden to be brushed off or discarded. Du Bois is equally insistent upon the importance of voting your conscience. During the 1910s, when the question of granting women the right to vote was a major political issue, Du Bois regularly devoted space in Crisis to both side of the issue, encouraging his readers to know the issues at hand and to vote in any way they believed. He was a staunch supporter of women's suffrage, believing that granting suffrage to all would afford the common man (and woman) with a means to have his voice heard on the national scale.
War, by itself, does not discriminate. It touches the lives of people from all backgrounds, social classes, and races, and during the twentieth century in particular, it would have been difficult to find anyone who was not affected in some way by its violence and destruction. Throughout his life, war was a major issue for W. E. B. Du Bois, who frequently wrote about the connections between racial injustice and state violence.
During and after the First World War, Du Bois developed a critique of the war in Europe in which he argued that it was not, as many white Americans imagined, simply a fight among Europeans over European issues. Instead, the war was a product of European imperialism and racial injustice. Du Bois also wrote extensively on the contributions of African Americans to the war effort and on the irony of seeing Black soldiers fight and die to restore democracy in Europe, while returning home to a land of intolerance and legal inequality. Returning black soldiers, he argued, should bring their struggle for equality back with them to their fatherland.
Du Bois' insights into the underlying causes and experiences of war demonstrate his idea that race is the root of conflict and worldwide racial justice is the only way to bring about lasting peace.