Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963
W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1984328 boxes (168.75 linear feet).
W.E.B. Du Bois
Scholar, writer, editor of The Crisis and other journals, co-founder of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the Pan African Congresses, international spokesperson for peace and for the rights of oppressed minorities, W.E.B. Du Bois was a son of Massachusetts who articulated the strivings of African Americans and developed a trenchant analysis of the problem of the color line in the twentieth century.
The Du Bois Papers contain almost 165 linear feet of the personal and professional papers of a remarkable social activist and intellectual. Touching on all aspects of his long life from his childhood during Reconstruction through the end of his life in 1963, the collection reflects the extraordinary breadth of his social and academic commitments from research in sociology to poetry and plays, from organizing for social change to organizing for Black consciousness.
Biographical Note
W.E.B. Du Bois, 1907
The activist, writer, and intellectual William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, was born in the rural western Massachusetts town of Great Barrington on February 23, 1868, his New England roots extending back before the Revolution and including ancestors of French, Dutch, and African American heritage. From early in life, Du Bois was recognized for his extraordinary intellectual talents. Educated in the local public schools, he graduated as valedictorian of his high school class in 1884, and with the financial assistance of friends and family, entered Fisk University as a sophomore in 1885. Thoroughly a northerner, Du Bois’ experiences in Nashville were crucial in galvanizing his understanding of American race relations. To earn additional money for his education, Du Bois taught in country schools in Tennessee during the summer months, where he saw first hand the bitter influence of segregation and the harshest expressions of American racism. The more subtle discrimination he had faced in Massachusetts coupled with this more menacing aspect encouraged Du Bois to take a more aggressive stance against
After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Fisk in 1888, Du Bois continued his studies at Harvard, enrolling as a junior and receiving his second bachelor’s degree in 1890, followed by his MA in 1891 and PhD in 1895. As he had in Great Barrington and Nashville, Du Bois distinguished himself in Cambridge as a scholar. Like most Americans at the time intent upon an academic career, Du Bois enhanced his scholarly credentials by studying abroad. At the University of Berlin between 1892 and 1894, Du Bois was introduced to contemporary German social scientific theory and, more generally, he internalized the German scholarly tradition of a synthetic approach to social issues, blending history, philosophy, economics, and politics in the study of human social relations. Enamored of German culture, Du Bois also began to recognize the international dimensions of the struggle for racial justice and the connections between racial oppression and imperialist domination.
Returning from Germany, Du Bois entered an extraordinarily busy and productive period of life. In 1894, he accepted an appointment on faculty of Wilberforce University; in 1895, he completed his dissertation; and in 1896, he got married — to Nina Gomer (d.1950), with whom he had two children, Burghardt (1898-1900) and Yolande (1901-1960) — and published his first book. The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870, the first volume published in the Harvard Historical Series (1896), was a landmark in social and historical analysis, concluding with a phrase that reflected Du Bois’ growing commitment to social action:
It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interest both of scientific truth and of future social reform, carefully to study such chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave-trade. The most obvious question which this198 study suggests is: How far in a State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? And although this chapter of history can give us no definite answer suited to the ever-varying aspects of political life, yet it would seem to warn any nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any social evil to grow. No persons would have seen the Civil War with more surprise and horror than the Revolutionists of 1776; yet from the small and apparently dying institution of their day arose the walled and castled Slave-Power. From this we may conclude that it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done.
In 1896, Du Bois also moved to an appointment as assistant instructor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, undertaking an intensive analysis of the African American population of Philadelphia. The resulting publication, The Philadelphia Negro (1899), is often considered his most original and compelling scholarly contribution, and it is a foundational work in the field of urban sociology. It is distinguished not only as an exhaustive study of one population, but as a sensitive portrait of a population responding actively to social stresses and to the demands of urban life, rather than seeing them either as passive victims or social cancer.
Moving next to Atlanta University to teach history and economics, from 1897 to 1910, Du Bois built a Department of Sociology with a national reputation. Perhaps the key to this reputation was the series of annual conferences Du Bois established in 1896. Each year, he and his colleagues focused on a single issue confronting African Americans, publishing the results in the Atlanta University Publications series. They planned, too, to return to each subject at regular intervals to build the basis for the longitudinal study of social problems. Although the Atlanta studies were not of uniformly high quality and were hampered by insufficient funding, taken together they offer a significant empirical basis for social analysis of the African American community at the turn of the turn of the twentieth century.
Not all of Du Bois’ work was purely academic. He wrote numerous articles for the popular press and his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903) brought him national attention. In retrospect, it may be his most enduring work, having become part of the canon of African American literature. Among other things, the book spotlights the growing tensions in the African American community between the accommodationism of Booker T. Washington and Du Bois’ more radical demand for full and immediate equal rights. Although Du Bois found some common ground with his rival — precious little — he was unrelenting in his criticism of Washington’s willingness to work slowly toward equality by demanding only what whites were willing to cede. “So far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South,” Du Bois wrote, “does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds, — so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this, — we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.”
Creating the institutional basis to build and sustain this agenda, Du Bois helped found the Niagara Movement in 1905. While the group never had a large membership, it did pave the way for the establishment in 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an interracial organization based upon similar, though somewhat less radical principles.
With activism consuming much of his energies, Du Bois left Atlanta University in 1910 to become director of research and publicity for the NAACP. A natural writer with previous experience editing The Moon (1906) and Horizon (1907-10), Du Bois was also appointed editor of the monthly journal of the NAACP, The Crisis. His numerous articles and editorials in Crisis solidified his position as a major spokesman for African American rights.
Freed of his purely academic commitments, he also continued to write for the popular press, publishing a number of highly regarded books, including The Negro (1915), Darkwater (1920), The Gift of Black Folk (1924), and the novels The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) and Dark Princess (1928). Among his most ambitious projects was a pageant of Black history and Black consciousness, The Star of Ethiopia, written both to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and to provide a counterweight to the racist Hollywood epic, Birth of a Nation. A poet, novelist, and playwright himself, Du Bois had a deep interest in African American literature, from folk music to the writing of the Harlem Renaissance. Du Bois even helped established a theatre troupe in 1924, the Krigwa Players, in which “Negro actors before Negro audiences interpret Negro life as depicted by Negro artists.”
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, one can discern two general trends in Du Bois’s thought. First, he began increasingly to extend his analysis of the color bar beyond the borders of the United States to the world scene. A vice-president of the first Pan-African Conference in 1900, Du Bois helped organize a series of Pan-African Congresses between 1919 and 1927 that recognized the solidarities of people of color around the world and the need to combat racial oppression and imperial domination of underdeveloped countries.
Secondly, while the NAACP and Du Bois both insisted upon the full integration of Blacks into the mainstream of American life, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 and the intransigence of whites on racial matters gradually led him toward a Black nationalist solution of the race problem, stressing Black control of businesses, cooperatives, and other similar institutions as the key to Black survival. In this position, Du Bois began to depart from the mainstream of the leadership within the NAACP, resulting in Du Bois’ resignation from the organization in 1934 and his departure from the editorship of Crisis.
Returning to Atlanta University, Du Bois resumed teaching duties and the scholarly life. His Black Reconstruction (1935) ran directly counter to the predominantly white historiography of the Reconstruction period by emphasizing the contributions of African Americans in the South during the years immediately after the Civil War. Although the book was criticized by Marxists and Non-Marxists alike, its basic interpretation was to become widely accepted by historians. He also wrote Black Folk, Then and Now (1939) and Dusk of Dawn (1940), and in 1940, he founded Phylon, a quarterly social science journal. With support from the Phelps-Stokes Fund, he also became involved in the preparation of an Encyclopedia of the Negro, a work that saw only a preparatory volume published.
W.E.B. Du Bois, ca.1950s
Still remarkably active and productive in his seventies, Du Bois retired from Atlanta University in 1944. He soon returned to the NAACP, where his duties revolved around special research projects, especially relating to the place of the African colonies in the postwar world, and where he served as consultant for the NAACP to the United States delegation at the founding meeting of the United Nations. The old rifts, however, were not so easily healed. In 1948 Du Bois was dismissed after continuing disagreements with other officials over NAACP policies.
In his later years, Du Bois served as a co-chair of the Council on African Affairs and chair of the Peace Information Center and the American Peace Crusade. In 1950, he made his first and only foray into formal politics, running for the U.S. Senate from New York on the American Labor Party ticket. Ironically, perhaps, this brush with formal politics was paired with a less congenial one. During the anti-Communist hysteria of 1951, Du Bois’s activities on behalf of the Peace Information Center led to an indictment against him and four associates as unregistered foreign agents. Although the charges were dismissed as groundless later that year, the attack by an arm of his own government was a bitter experience. Du Bois nevertheless continued his work in peace and international affairs, visiting Russia and China.
Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1961. That same year, at the age of ninety-three, he moved to Ghana at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah to serve as editor of an Encyclopedia Africana. Although poor health limited his work, Du Bois continued to study and write. He took Ghanaian citizenship and on August 27, 1963, died in Accra at the age of ninety-five. Du Bois was survived by his second wife, the writer Shirley Graham Du Bois, whom he had married in 1951.
Over his lifetime Du Bois wrote or edited more than three dozen books and hundreds of articles. His accomplishments were many. As an activist and organizer, Du Bois helped usher in the modern civil rights movement by founding and building the Niagara Movement and NAACP, and he helped create periodicals that became important voices for Black identity. As a scholar and founder of American sociology, he contributed early and important works in the literature of demography, race sociology and research methodology, he helped define the continuous social survey and the fields of social stratification and race relations. As a writer, his work earned him election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Although Du Bois’s reputation suffered among white Americans during the McCarthy era, and although he died in 1963 before the reputations of McCarthy victims were rehabilitated, his impact and influence were international in scope. A generation after his death, Du Bois remains a potent figure internationally, and a source of inspiration for millions.
Scope and Contents of the Collection
The Du Bois Papers cover virtually every stage in the long career and life of W.E.B. Du Bois, documenting his involvement in a wide range of twentieth century movements, from racial justice to economic justice, peace to women’s rights, labor activism, and cultural pride. Among the 20 series in the collection, the most voluminous and important is the correspondence — over 100,000 items on 79 reels of microfilm — that document equally Du Bois’s public activities and private life. A diligent writer with an extraordinarily broad array of interests, he interacted with most of the major figures in reform circles in the United States, and he had a wide and avid circle of correspondents internationally.
The earliest letter in the collection, a note to his grandmother, dates from 1877 when Du Bois was just nine years old, and among the latest is the draft of a letter, written not long before his death in 1963, appealing to the leaders of the Soviet Union and China to heal the divisions that had arisen in the world Communist movement. Although only a few items from Du Bois’s early childhood survive, the collection becomes richer beginning with his student days in the 1880s and 1890s, and richer still with the commencement of his career as scholar and educator in the 1890s and 1900s. They are at their fullest during his period with the NAACP as editor of The Crisis, 1910-1934, and they remain nearly as abundant for the last thirty years of his life, 1934-1963.
During his lifetime Du Bois conscientiously retained his incoming letters, copies of outgoing letters, and files of his speeches, articles, books, and other manuscripts. While these files are most complete for the middle and later stages of his life, no period is entirely undocumented.
The finding aid is not yet an exhaustive, item-by-item inventory of the Du Bois Papers, and the series inventories supplied below should be considered selective unless otherwise indicated.
Organization of the Collection
This collection is organized into ten series:
- Series 1. Correspondence, 1877-1963
- Series 2. Speeches, 1877-1963
- Series 3. Articles, 1877-1963
- Series 4. Newspaper Columns, 1877-1963
- Series 5. Nonfiction Books, 1877-1963
- Series 6. Research Materials, 1877-1963
- Series 7. Pamphlets and Leaflets, 1877-1963
- Series 8. Book Reviews, 1877-1963
- Series 9. Petitions, 1877-1963
- Series 10. Essays, Forewords, and Student Papers, 1877-1963
- Series 11. Novels, 1877-1963
- Series 12. Pageants, 1877-1963
- Series 13. Plays, 1877-1963
- Series 14. Short Fiction, 1877-1963
- Series 15. Poetry, 1877-1963
- Series 16. Miscellaneous, 1877-1963
- Series 17. Photographs, 1877-1963
- Series 18. Memorabilia, 1877-1963
- Series 19. Audiovisual, 1877-1963
- Series 20. Newspaper Clippings, 1877-1963
Information on Use
Terms of Access and Use
The collection is open for research.
Preferred Citation
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1913-1992. MS 312. Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1913-1992. MS 312. Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
History of the Collection
Acquired from Shirley Graham Du Bois, 1973
At various times during his life, Du Bois or his relatives transferred material to Fisk University, Yale University, and the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library, but Du Bois retained ownership of most of his papers pending a final decision on a repository site. When Du Bois moved to Ghana in 1961, he took some correspondence and other manuscripts with him, but left the bulk with Herbert Aptheker in New York City, with the expectation that Aptheker would edit that correspondence and prepare other works for publication.
In New York, Aptheker and his wife arranged the collection into working order and supplemented it with copies of located in other repositories. The last two years of Du Bois’ life generated additional papers including new correspondence, papers relating to the Encyclopedia Africana, and other manuscripts.
At Du Bois’ death in 1963, ownership of his files passed to his widow, Shirley Graham Du Bois. When Kwame Nkrumah’s government was overthrown in 1966, Mrs. Du Bois left Ghana in haste for Cairo, Egypt, taking the papers with her. Aptheker continued to care for the papers left with him until the entire collection went to Massachusetts in 1973.
By the early 1970s, the University of Massachusetts Press contracted with Mrs. Du Bois and Aptheker to publish selections from the correspondence and other previously unpublished writings of Du Bois. Five volumes were published between 1973 and 1980: three of selected correspondence, plus The Education of Black People and Prayers for Dark People. Aware that plans for a permanent location for the collection had not been made, University of Massachusetts officials negotiated an agreement with Mrs. Du Bois for all of Du Bois’ papers in Mrs. Du Bois’ and Dr. Aptheker’s possession to come to the University Library in 1973. Late in 1979, the Library received an additional accession of material that Mrs. Du Bois had kept with her in Cairo during her lifetime.
Additional Information
Related Material
While the University of Massachusetts collection constitutes the major source of Du Bois material, other papers are also to be found in other repositories, and are included on the microfilm. Of these other repositories, Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, has the most important collection. A full inventory of these papers has not been completed, but a preliminary listing indicates 128 manuscript boxes of papers.
Approximately fifty of these include pamphlets and newspaper and journal clippings on various topics, collected by Du Bois over his lifetime. Another fifty or so boxes include manuscripts of Du Bois’ writings, along with research materials used in their preparation. Of particular interest in this area are the research materials and drafts for Du Bois’ study of the Black soldier in the First World War. Some short story manuscripts (not published and not represented in the University of Massachusetts collection) are also to be found. Several boxes consist of correspondence, most of which is fairly routine, including arrangements for lectures which Du Bois delivered. Some of this correspondence, however, is substantive. Smaller amounts of material concern the NAACP and Atlanta University and include some Du Bois memorabilia.
Perhaps next in importance are materials in the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers held as part of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection at Yale University. The five manuscript boxes include a small amount of correspondence (twenty-five or so letters) with Johnson, Countee Cullen, George Padmore and others. Manuscripts are to be found for various writings, including Dusk of Dawn, Theft of Black Folk, Darkwater, The Negro, The World and Africa and several articles and poems. Other files concern the two Amenia Conferences, the United Nations, and other areas.
The Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library also holds a small collection of Du Bois material within the Hugh Smythe Papers. Smythe, a sociologist, was a research assistant to Du Bois in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Materials here include drafts of several essays, articles, and speeches, along with Du Bois’ student materials, such as philosophy notes from Harvard University, and other miscellaneous items. These papers have been microfilmed by the New York Public Library. The gaps that appear in the Du Bois materials at the University of Massachusetts are filled quite neatly in many instances by papers in one or more of these three repositories. There are also smaller amounts of Du Bois materials elsewhere, in private hands and repositories open to the public. Du Bois was in constant communication with a wide variety of prominent individuals whose own papers have since found their way into various archival repositories. Researchers may find Du Bois items in one of these collections for which no copy is to be found elsewhere. The William Stanley Braithwaite Papers at Morgan State University are one of many such examples. The I’IAACP Papers at the Library of Congress also provide a source of additional information on Du Bois and help to document his work within the organization which dominated so much of his active life.
Many Du Bois materials in other repositories have been copied and the copies donated to the collection by Herbert Aptheker. The University Library is continuing to add copies of both published and unpublished materials by and about Du Bois, but they are not included in the microfilm edition or described in this because they represent only a small proportion of the total Du Bois materials is other locations. Legal ownership of Du Bois’ personal library was conveyed to the University of Massachusetts by Mrs. Du Bois in 1973, but as of 1980 it remained in the office of the Encyclopedia Africana in Accra, Ghana. A list of the books is included in Series 16, Miscellaneous Material.
Bibliography
Among the many works on Du Bois, see:
- Green, Dan S. “The Truth Shall Make Ye Free; The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois” (Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 1973)
- Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (N.Y.: Holt, 1994)
- Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (N.Y.: Holt, 2000)
- Partington, Paul G. W.E.B. Du Bois: A Bibliography of His Published Writings (Whittier, Calif.: Partington, 1979)
Acknowledgments
The organization and publication of the original finding aid for the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers was made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, as well as their expert staffs, especially Margaret Chhil and Jeffrey Field of the NEH and Roger Bruns, Sara Jackson, and George Vogt of the NHPRC.
In large part, the work was also made possible by the continuing interest, assistance, and support of Dr. Randolph W. Bromery, Chancellor of UMass Amherst (1971-1979) and the archivist Katherine Emerson. The work itself was carried our by a team consisting of Mary Bell, William Brown, Kerry Buckley, Carol DeSouza, Candace Hall, Judith Kerr, Susan Lister, Susan Mahnke, Betsy McDonnell, and Elizabeth Webster. During the final stages, Robert DeRusha and John Kendall gave generously of their time. Herbert Aptheker, John Blassingame, John Bracey, Francis Broderick, Malcolm Call, John Cushing, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Herbert Gutman, Sidney Kaplan, Julius Lester, Paul Partington, Elliott Rudwick, and Leone Stein all gave generously of their time and knowledge.
Lastly, the staff of the Microfilming Corporation of America, especially editor Jack Ericson, Edward Reno, and Barbara Sokolosky, facilitated the filming of the Papers and the publication of the original guide.
The following terms represent persons, organizations, and topics documented in this collection. Use these headings to search for additional materials on this web site, in the Five College Library Catalog, or in other library catalogs and databases.
- African American writers.
- African-Americans–History–20th century–Sources.
- Designs.
- Du Bois, W. E. B., 1868-1963.
- Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967.
- NAACP.
- Niagara Movement.
- Paris (France)–Intellectual life–20th century–Sources.
- Photographs.
- Race relations.
- Scrapbooks.
- Scripts.
- Sketches.
Series Descriptions
| Series 1. Correspondence | 1877-1963 | 119.25 lin. feet | |
| Series 1 constitutes over three quarters of the Du Bois Papers, consisting of correspondence received by Du Bois throughout his and carbon copies of outgoing letters. His life covered ninety-five years of important social change in the United States and the world, during which Du Bois was a leading participant in many of the most important efforts for change. He knew and corresponded with many of the leading figures of his long lifetime.
Du Bois’ correspondence files reflect his involvement in many areas of twentieth century racial, literary, and social reform movements. The 100,000 or more items [provide a wealth of information of his own career and the work of others with whom he came in contact. The earliest correspondence dates from 1877, however the bulk dates from after 1910. The files continue through the years of his work with NAACP, teaching and research at Atlanta University during the 1930s and 1940s, his return to the NAACP in 1944, his involvement in the peace movement during the late 1940s and 1950s, and his work with the Encyclopedia Africana until his death in 1963. A few items of Shirley Graham Du Bois’ correspondence concerning Du Bois, dating between 1963 and 1965, bring this part of the collection to a close. Numbered among Du Bois’ many correspondences are such figures as Jane Addams, Sherwood Anderson, Ralph Bunche, Andrew Carnegie, Charles Chesnutt, Countee Cullen, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Albert Einstein, Mohandas Gandhi, W. C. Handy, Langston Hughes, William James, James Weldon Johnson, Jomo Kenyatta, Martin Luther King, Claude McKay, Margaret Mead, Kwame Nkrumah, Eugene O’Neill, Sylvia Pankhurst, A. Phillip Randolph, Paul Robeson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Arthur and Joel Spingarn, Moorfield Storey, Mary Church Terrell, Carl Van Vechten, Booker T. Washington, H. G. Wells, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins. The correspondence is arranged chronologically by year, and alphabetically by name of correspondent within each year. There are two major exceptions to this arrangement: (1) The correspondence from 1877 through 1910 is so sparse, compared to later years, that it has been grouped ina single alphabetical sequence; and (2) from 1911 through 1934, Du Bois had so much correspondence as editor of The Crisis that we have grouped his Crisis for those years separately.
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| A. General Correspondence | 1877-1965 | ||
| View detailed inventory, part 1 (1877-1932)
View detailed inventory, part 2 (1933-1965)
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| B. Crisis Correspondence | 1911-1951 | ||
| View detailed inventory
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| Series 2. Speeches | 1888-1962 | 8.5 lin. feet | |
| Series 2 contains manuscripts of over three hundred speeches delivered by Du Bois, ranging from his college commencement addresses at Fisk and Harvard through the end of his life. The bulk of these date from the 1940s and 1950s and reflect the gradual development of Du Bois’ thought on world peace, colonialism, developments in Africa and America, and many other subjects. Many speeches relate to his 1950 campaign for the U.S. Senate. While many of the speeches were printed, Du Bois frequently revised the spoken version considerably before publication, and thus the original manuscripts offer important insight into Du Bois’ process of writing, his working style, and changes in thought and presentation.
The titles of speeches in the inventory are generally those supplied by Du Bois, except where square brackets indicate a title supplied by the cataloger.
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| Series 3. Articles | 1887-1968 | 6.5 lin. feet | |
Series 3 includes over four hundred drafts and other versions of articles published by Du Bois in periodicals, as well as a smaller number of works that were apparently never published. The manuscripts are arranged into five subseries, chronologically within each. Unless otherwise indicated, All are typescripts.
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| Series 4. Newspaper Columns | 1927-1961 | 1.5 lin. feet | |
| The manuscript versions of Du Bois’ columns for the Chicago Defender, Chicago Globe, Freedom, National Guardian, Chicago New Africa, New York Amsterdam News, People’s Voice, and Pittsburgh Courier reflect his thinking on a wide range of current events, in many cases representing Du Bois’ perspective prior to alteration by the newspapers’ editors. A few of the manuscripts appear never to have been published at all.
The series is arranged alphabetically by title of the newspaper and then chronologically within.
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| Series 5. Nonfiction Books | 1896-1962 | 5.25 lin. feet | |
| Manuscripts of Du Bois’ nonfiction books, including several unpublished works. Among the significant unpublished works is A World Search for Democracy (mostly complete), which was written in the 1930s, Russia and America: An Interpretation, and This Africa: How It Arose, Whither It Goes. Also noteworthy are Du Bois’ research notes for the Encyclopedia of the Negro and for a study of the Black soldier during the First World War, The Black Man and the Wounded World. The series also includes prospectuses for several books.
Among the published works represented in the series are several surviving chapters of The Souls of Black Folk and a complete typescript with Du Bois’ annotations of A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. The series is arranged alphabetically by title.
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| Series 6. Research Materials | 1896-1959 | 0.75 lin. feet | |
| Typescripts, handwritten notes, and printed materials arranged in the following sequence: research notes on Africa, general research notes, notes for speeches and articles, and miscellaneous notes. There are approximately 800-1,000 total pages.
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| Series 7. Pamphlets and Leaflets | 1902-1962 | 1 lin. foot | |
| Materials used in preparation of pamphlets or leafets. The publications range widely in topic, from Du Bois’ 1904 Credo and his Bibliography of the Negro Folk Song in America to pieces on African Americans, education, Benjamin Franklin, peace, and the hydrogen bomb.
The series is arranged chronologically.
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| Series 8. Book Reviews | 1905-1961 | 1 lin. foot | |
| Fifty-five book reviews written by Du Bois, focused on works dealing with Blacks, Africa, the America South, and race relations.
The series is arranged chronologically.
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| Series 9. Petitions | 1947-1961 | 0.25 lin. feet | |
| Among the petitions are the manuscript of Du Bois’ introduction and to the NAACP’s Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities (1947), along with the contributions of other authors.
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| Series 10. Essays and Student Papers | ca.1888-1962 (bulk 1924-1962) | 1 lin. foot | |
| Contributions to encyclopedias and other works of multiple authorship, including works that were apparently never published. The series includes five forewords to books by other authors, and student papers arranged in four groups: papers from Fisk (ca.1888), papers from Harvard (1888-1891), student papers from the 1890s on economics and politics, and “Sketches, 1889-1896,” which includes some travel notes, journals, notes on birthday celebrations, and some creative writing.
Each subseries is arranged chronologically.
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| Series 11. Novels | 1892-1961 | 1.25 lin. feet | |
| The earliest evidence in the collection of Du Bois as a novelist is the manuscript and plot outline of A Fellow of Harvard (1892), written when Du Bois was just twenty-four, and the latest consist of fragments and notes concerning his trilogy, The Black Flame and Worlds of Color, both dating from 1961.
The materials are arranged alphabetically by title, with unidentified fragments and notes at the end of the file.
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| Series 12. Pageants | 1913-1941 | 0.5 lin. feet | |
| Du Bois’ pageants were large-scale presentations on the course of Black history, designed to appeal to a mass audience. The most famous, The Star of Ethiopia, was designed for a cast 1,000 and was performed in New York (1913), Washington (1915), Philadelphia (1916), and Los Angeles (1925). The Star of Ethiopia material includes typescripts and manuscripts, stage directions, posters, programs, and financial records of some of the productions. Manuscripts for other pageants include George Washington and Black Folk: A Pageant for the Bicentennary, 1732-1932, The Souls Jewel of Ethiopia, The Seven Gifts of Ethiopia, and The Nine Tales of Black Folk.
The pageants are arranged alphabetically by title.
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| Series 13. Plays | 1928-1940 | 2 lin. feet | |
| Manuscripts of plays written by Du Bois arranged in two groups. The first Playthings of the Night, was intended for book publication in 1931, and contains introductory essays by Du Bois and various drafts of five plays. The second group, The Darker Wisdom, was intended for publication in 1940, and contains manuscripts of four of the five plays from Playthings, one with an altered title. The plays include The All Mother (later titled The Slave, the Serf, and the Blond Beast), Black Hercules at the Forks of the Road, Black Man, Christ on the Andes, and Seven Up. The series also includes an outline for The Prodigal Race, and unidentified fragment of a play or tale, and variant title pages or subtitles.
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| Series 14. Short Fiction | 1895-1950s | 1.0 lin. feet | |
| Manuscript and typewritten short stories arranged in two groups: seven “fables” of one to two pages each, and approximately thirty-five longer short stories plus a few fragments. The earliest item in the series is an 1895 story about Wilberforce University, and DU Bois continued to write short stories into the 1950s. The latest stories are written under the pseudonym “Bud Weisob,” which may be a too-transparent effort to avoid McCarthy-era blacklisting. Few of these stories were ever published.
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| Series 15. Poetry | 1907-1965 | 0.25 lin. feet | |
| Throughout his life, Du Bois wrote poetry. Among his most notable published poems were “The Song of the Smoke,” “The Christmas Prayers of God,” “Suez,” and “Ghana Calls,” but there are many more unpublished works. The poetry is arranged in two groups: about 130 pages of poetry that was published (primarily in three periodicals, Horizon, The Crisis, and Masses and Mainstream), and about two hundred pages that were apparently never published.
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| Series 16. Miscellaneous | 1803-1964 | 2.25 lin. feet | |
| Du Bois maintained an avid interest in his family history and collected a variety of material relating to his past. The genealogical records in this series include vital, military, financial, and land records; lists of relatives and important family dates; and two diaries of his paternal grandfather, Alexander Du Bois (156 and 1861), along with some of Alexander’s correspondence (1875 and 1878).
The series also includes manuscript and printed materials from Du Bois’ education at Great Barrington High School, Fisk University (including his teaching certificates and contracts from Tennessee, 1886 and 1887), Harvard University, and the University of Berlin, as well as his time on the faculty at Wilberforce and Atlanta Universities. Also included in the series are brief biographies of Du Bois, bibliographies of his writings, a list of books in his personal library, and a typed translation of an oral history conducted with Du Bois by William Ingersoll in 1960. The series contains several works by other authors, including Shirley Graham Du Bois’ notes and fragments of speeches for legal defence of Du Bois in 1951; six poems by Yolade Du Bois; manuscript speeches and published articles by Hugh Smythe (one of Du Bois’ assistants); and other handwritten, typed, and printed articles and speeches. Many of these concern the status, education, and economic condition of Blacks.
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| Series 17. Photographs | ca.1864-1963 | 2.5 linear feet | |
| The photographs are arranged in three groups: photographs solicited for publication in The Crisis (several hundred items), Du Bois family photographs (ca.200 items), and “theme” photographs (ca.300 items). The photographs have been digitized and are available on the Special Collections website through our Du Bois Central page.
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| Series 18. Memorabilia | 1913-1963 | 0.5 linear feet | |
| Medals, badges, and certificates of various sorts received by Du Bois. There are approximately one hundred items in the series, ranging from class reunion badges to the Spingarn Medal received by Du Bois in 1920, the Du Bois medal created by the American Negro Commemorative Society, the Lenin Peace Prize, membership certificates for Phi Beta Kappa and the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1944), and several honorary degrees.
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| Series 19. Audiovisual | 1958-1979 | 2.5 lin. feet | |
| Motion pictures and videotape copies of Du Bois receiving honorary degree in Prague in 1958 and visiting Premier Chou En-lai, Vice-premier Chen Yi, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and others in China in 1959; and of the dedication in 1969 and dedication as a National Historic Landmark in 1979 of Du Bois’ birthsite in Great Barrington, Mass. Audiotapes of the burial service of Du Bois, 8/29/63 and tribute by Kwame Nkrumah.
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| Series 20. Newspaper Clippings | 1901-1955 | 3 lin. feet | |
| Miscellaneous newspaper articles about Du Bois and subjects of interest to him. The series has not been organized and is in poor physical condition due to embrittlement of the paper.
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Visit Subjects
- African Americans--Civil rights.
- African Americans--History--1877-1964.
- Crisis (New York, N.Y.).
- Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963--Views on democracy.
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
- Pan-Africanism.
- United States--Race relations.
- Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963.
- Photographs.
Call no.: MS 312
