“The name Du Bois means hatred of racism and colonialism, of repression and bigotry, and devotion to science, brotherhood, popular and national equality, and socialism.”

Herbert Aptheker, 1968

The W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst was established in 2009 to engage audiences in discussion and scholarship about global issues involving race, labor, and social justice. UMass Amherst is the proud home of the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, which are housed on the 25th floor of the library in Special Collections University Archives. The entire collection is free to view digitally.

The Du Bois Center’s mission is to make the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as his contemporaries, available and accessible to everyone throughout the world for application to the problems and issues of the 21st Century, and to create new knowledge and support scholarship emanating from the life and teachings of W. E. B. Du Bois.