美国人物生平 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

   William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868. He was a noted scholar, editor, and African American activist. Du Bois was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP-the largest and oldest civil rights organization in America). Throughout his life Du Bois fought discrimination and racism. He made significant contributions to debates about race, politics, and history in the United States in the first half of the 20^th century, primarily through his writing and impassioned speaking on race relations. Du Bois also served as editor of The Crisis magazine and published several scholarly works on race and African American history. By the time he died, in 1963, he had written 17 books, edited four journals and played a key role in reshaping black-white relations in America. He died on August 27, 1963.

1)      W.E.B. Du Bois, Growing Up

   William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois grew up to become a pioneer in the civil rights movement. One might say he had perfect timing. He was born three years after the end of the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction, when the once divided country was trying to rebuild. The 14^th Amendment in 1868 gave national citizenship to former slaves, and the 15^th Amendment granted black men the right to vote in 1870. Yet, just because these amendments were the laws of the land did not mean that all citizens abided by them.

   W.E.B. Du Bois’s mother was a domestic worker and his father was a barber. His father left the family when William was still very young. Young William grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he received encouragement from teachers in the local high school. When his mother died in 1884, Du Bois was 16 years old and penniless. To make ends meet, he worked as a timekeeper in a local mill. Amazingly, that same year he managed to become the first African American to graduate from his high school. Du Bois went on to attend Fisk
                University in Nashville, Tennessee, for two years and then went on to earn his B.A. and Ph. D from Harvard
                    University.

   Du Bois’s experiences in Nashville had a profound effect on him. Growing up in Great Barrington, where there were probably few than 50 blacks among the 4000 residents, he had little exposure to African American culture. Things were different in Nashville. There, he not only experienced African American culture but also saw firsthand the effects of racism, when people treat others differently because of the color of their skin or the way the look. This period in his life had a great influence in shaping his beliefs and ideas on race relations that would last for the rest of his life.

2，W.E.B. Du Bios and the NAACP

When W.E.B. Du Bios was a college student he observed racism and it made him want to do something about it. On the 100^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1909, 60 black and white citizens, including Du Bois, formed the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The struggle of African American to secure their rights had sometimes led to violent confrontations between blacks and whites. The founders of the NACCP had a different idea.

The NAACP was founded on the belief that nonviolent protests and legal actions were the best ways to ensure equal rights for all Americans. Du bois became a member of the NAACP board and edited a journal of opinions called The Crisis. During its early years, the association won many legal cases to ensure the fights of minorities.

In 1917, for example, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional an ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky, that required blacks to live in certain sections of the city. The NAACP won the case because the ordinance violated the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which clearly states that all people are entitled to equal protection under the law. In 1923, the association won another case when the Supreme Court decided that blacks could not excluded from juries because doing so denied those accused of crimes of a fair trial.

In the United States, people who are put on trial are guaranteed to have their cases heard by a “jury of their peers”. Your peers are people who are similar to you. So excluding certain groups of people because of their race will not result in a jury of one’s peers.

Du Bois played an important role in the NAACP. In 1945 he represented the association in San Francisco, California, during the establishment of the United Nations. Over the years, the NAACP has persuaded presidents to end racial discrimination in hiring and military service. The organization grew from 60 people   to a membership of more than 500000 today. Its headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the most famous lawyers for the NAACP was Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Supreme Court justice himself.

3, W.E.B. Du Bois and the 1900 Paris Exhibition

W.E.B. Du Bois wanted the world to know the gains African American had made since the Civil War, as well as their plight as second –class citizens. In 1899, Daniel A.P. Murray, an African American researcher and historian at the Library of Congress, worked with Du Bois and others to put together pictures and other items to show the state of African Americans as the 20^th century began.

Their award-winning “Negro Exhibition” debuted in Paris, France, in1900. It featured 500 photos of African American communities, successful black businesses and schools, as well as books and pamphlets by African American authors. (It has also been on display at the Library of Congress.) African Americans had a long history of going to Paris as a refuge from American racism, so it’s not surprising that Du Bois and his colleagues decided to open the exhibit there.

In the exhibit, Du Bois showed that African Americans, in the 35 years since the Civil War, had come an amazing distance since being an enslaved people. A majority of African Americans were able to read; they owned one million acres of land and paid taxes on $12 million worth of property.

The Paris Exhibition was powerful evidence that African Americans were an important, productive part of American society. But even though they had made great gains since the end of slavery, state and federal courts were preventing many African Americans from voting and holding office. All over the country, people were being hurt and killed because of the color of their skin. And even more African Americans were being unfairly excluded from schools and jobs. In the first decade of the 1900s, W.E.B. Du bois and others saw the need for stronger measures to ensure full rights for his people. Through this exhibit, his writings and talks, Du bois devoted his life to fighting inequality among the races.

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