WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.020 Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we take your 00:00:02.020 --> 00:00:04.080 essential sources, the articles, the history, 00:00:04.280 --> 00:00:06.540 the core research, and really try to distill 00:00:06.540 --> 00:00:10.359 them into clear, actionable knowledge. And today, 00:00:10.539 --> 00:00:13.339 we are diving deep into a life that is just, 00:00:13.439 --> 00:00:17.640 um... intellectually massive, the life of William 00:00:17.640 --> 00:00:19.859 Edward Burckhardt Du Bois. It's hard to even 00:00:19.859 --> 00:00:22.039 know where to start. To call him just an important 00:00:22.039 --> 00:00:24.420 figure feels like a huge understatement. It really 00:00:24.420 --> 00:00:26.480 is. I mean, you could argue he was the chief 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:28.539 intellectual architect of the modern civil rights 00:00:28.539 --> 00:00:30.879 movement in America, but even that feels too 00:00:30.879 --> 00:00:33.439 small because his influence went so far beyond 00:00:33.439 --> 00:00:35.579 the U .S. And the timeline of his life is just 00:00:35.579 --> 00:00:38.140 staggering. He was born in 1868, right after 00:00:38.140 --> 00:00:41.619 the Civil War. And he lives until 1963. So his 00:00:41.619 --> 00:00:44.640 95 years literally span from the aftermath of 00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:47.240 slavery to the absolute peak of the civil rights 00:00:47.240 --> 00:00:50.000 movement. The entire story. Absolutely. A pioneer 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.799 in so many fields. He was the first African -American 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:55.320 to get a Ph .D. from Harvard. In 1895. Yeah. 00:00:55.359 --> 00:00:57.820 A foundational sociologist, a brilliant historian, 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:00.200 a journalist and, of course, a founder of the 00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:03.259 NAACP. But I think what we really want to explore 00:01:03.259 --> 00:01:06.379 today is the journey itself. You know, how does 00:01:06.379 --> 00:01:11.140 a quiet, data driven academic. become this radical 00:01:11.140 --> 00:01:14.540 global activist who starts challenging the very 00:01:14.540 --> 00:01:17.140 foundations of Western capitalism. Right. That's 00:01:17.140 --> 00:01:18.780 our mission here, to trace that intellectual 00:01:18.780 --> 00:01:21.799 transformation and unpack the key ideas he developed. 00:01:21.959 --> 00:01:23.900 Because these concepts, they're not just historical 00:01:23.900 --> 00:01:27.079 footnotes. Not at all. They are literally the 00:01:27.079 --> 00:01:29.959 vocabulary we still use today to talk about race 00:01:29.959 --> 00:01:33.079 and identity and justice. OK, so let's do that. 00:01:33.120 --> 00:01:35.680 Let's set out the three core concepts right at 00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:37.140 the top, because we're going to be coming back 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:39.540 to them again and again. Good idea. First up, 00:01:39.599 --> 00:01:41.900 you have the color line. The color line. It's 00:01:41.900 --> 00:01:43.640 a phrase he popularized. He actually borrowed 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:45.239 it from Frederick Douglass, but he made it his 00:01:45.239 --> 00:01:48.120 own. And for him, it wasn't just about, you know, 00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:51.480 segregation signs. It was this enduring global 00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:56.000 injustice, a fundamental. political, even metaphysical 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:58.900 boundary separating black and white humanity 00:01:58.900 --> 00:02:01.060 across the entire planet. And then the second 00:02:01.060 --> 00:02:02.939 one, which just completely revolutionized how 00:02:02.939 --> 00:02:04.760 we think about identity, double consciousness. 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:07.700 Ah, yes. I mean, you read his definition today 00:02:07.700 --> 00:02:10.460 and it still just hits you. It's so clear. It 00:02:10.460 --> 00:02:13.000 really is. He describes this internal psychic 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:15.599 split, right? This feeling of being both inside 00:02:15.599 --> 00:02:18.099 and outside of American culture at the same time. 00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:21.840 His words were, an American, a Negro. Two souls, 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:24.319 two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings. That 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:27.580 sense of two -ness. It's this constant, exhausting 00:02:27.580 --> 00:02:30.620 negotiation between who you are and how the world 00:02:30.620 --> 00:02:32.879 forces you to see yourself through this lens 00:02:32.879 --> 00:02:35.860 of racism. Exactly. And the third one, which 00:02:35.860 --> 00:02:38.719 is, let's say, often revisited and sometimes 00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:41.400 pretty controversial, is the talented 10th. Right. 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:44.639 This was his deep belief that the top 10 % of 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:47.280 African Americans, the intellectual elite, needed 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:50.199 the best possible education. A classical liberal 00:02:50.199 --> 00:02:52.560 arts education. And the goal wasn't just for 00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:55.419 their own success. No, not at all. The goal was 00:02:55.419 --> 00:02:57.580 for them to act as the leadership class. They 00:02:57.580 --> 00:02:59.840 had a duty to lift up the entire race and secure 00:02:59.840 --> 00:03:02.580 full rights for everyone. And we'll see how that 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:04.759 idea didn't just appear from nowhere. It grew 00:03:04.759 --> 00:03:07.780 out of his earliest work as a sociologist. Perfect. 00:03:07.979 --> 00:03:11.360 So we have The Color Line, Double Consciousness, 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:13.919 and The Talented Tenth. And just a quick note 00:03:13.919 --> 00:03:15.960 for you before we jump in, since we'll be saying 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:18.300 his name a lot. Oh, yes. Pronunciation. He was 00:03:18.300 --> 00:03:20.599 apparently very specific about it. It's do boys 00:03:20.599 --> 00:03:24.199 with the emphasis on that last syllable. It sort 00:03:24.199 --> 00:03:26.780 of fits, doesn't it? A certain fastidiousness 00:03:26.780 --> 00:03:29.400 for a man whose whole life was about intellectual 00:03:29.400 --> 00:03:32.460 precision. It really does. OK, so let's start 00:03:32.460 --> 00:03:35.259 at the beginning. Part one, the foundations of 00:03:35.259 --> 00:03:38.210 the scholar. Where does this story start? So 00:03:38.210 --> 00:03:40.909 Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, 00:03:40.949 --> 00:03:43.250 Massachusetts. And, you know, when you think 00:03:43.250 --> 00:03:46.710 of the great black leaders of that era, you often 00:03:46.710 --> 00:03:48.349 picture them coming out of the post -slavery 00:03:48.349 --> 00:03:52.069 South. His New England origin feels important, 00:03:52.250 --> 00:03:54.310 almost unlikely. It was definitely atypical. 00:03:54.430 --> 00:03:56.810 Great Barrington was, for its time, a pretty 00:03:56.810 --> 00:03:58.669 integrated community. It was nothing like the 00:03:58.669 --> 00:04:01.030 post -Civil War North in most places. And his 00:04:01.030 --> 00:04:05.219 family had deep roots there. Very deep. His mother's 00:04:05.219 --> 00:04:08.159 family, the Burgharts, had been free black residents 00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:11.439 for generations. They traced their ancestry back 00:04:11.439 --> 00:04:14.680 through Dutch, African, and English lines. So 00:04:14.680 --> 00:04:18.439 this relative insulation from the absolute worst 00:04:18.439 --> 00:04:21.040 forms of racism was pretty unique for his childhood. 00:04:21.259 --> 00:04:23.639 He still experienced racism, of course. His father 00:04:23.639 --> 00:04:25.800 left when he was two, so he and his mother were 00:04:25.800 --> 00:04:28.490 in difficult circumstances. Right. But the town's 00:04:28.490 --> 00:04:30.949 structure gave him one huge advantage. Education. 00:04:31.269 --> 00:04:34.110 Education. His mother, his teachers, they all 00:04:34.110 --> 00:04:36.629 saw how brilliant he was from a young age. And 00:04:36.629 --> 00:04:39.269 they really championed him. This created in him 00:04:39.269 --> 00:04:42.329 this deep, lifelong belief that knowledge, that 00:04:42.329 --> 00:04:45.170 intellectual rigor, was the ultimate weapon against 00:04:45.170 --> 00:04:47.600 prejudice. And you see that belief immediately 00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:50.240 in his educational path. But it takes a really 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:52.899 sharp turn when he moves south in 1885. It does. 00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:54.720 His mother passed away just before he turned 00:04:54.720 --> 00:04:57.240 17, but his church congregation actually raised 00:04:57.240 --> 00:04:59.240 the money to send him to Fisk University in Nashville. 00:04:59.500 --> 00:05:02.300 An HBCU, a historically black college and university. 00:05:02.579 --> 00:05:06.379 Yes. And this was his first profound, unfiltered 00:05:06.379 --> 00:05:08.439 exposure to the brutal reality of the South. 00:05:08.620 --> 00:05:11.079 He went from a place where the color line was 00:05:11.079 --> 00:05:13.920 maybe more abstract, more permeable. To a place 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:17.750 where it was rigid. Enforced by law, by Jim Crow, 00:05:17.970 --> 00:05:19.949 and by a constant threat of violence. What a 00:05:19.949 --> 00:05:22.629 shock that must have been. A total shock. He 00:05:22.629 --> 00:05:24.649 would teach in rural Tennessee during his summer 00:05:24.649 --> 00:05:27.430 breaks. And seeing the poverty, the lack of education, 00:05:27.689 --> 00:05:30.529 the systemic suppression of his people, he said 00:05:30.529 --> 00:05:33.329 it transformed him. It gave him an activist purpose 00:05:33.329 --> 00:05:35.589 he didn't really have before. He was seeing the 00:05:35.589 --> 00:05:37.990 color line in practice for the first time. Viscerally. 00:05:38.490 --> 00:05:41.689 But after Fisk. He goes back north for the most 00:05:41.689 --> 00:05:44.509 elite education you could get. Harvard. He transfers 00:05:44.509 --> 00:05:47.569 to Harvard in 1888. And it's telling, you know, 00:05:47.589 --> 00:05:49.629 Harvard didn't accept any of his credits from 00:05:49.629 --> 00:05:52.209 Fisk. He had to basically start over. Wow. But 00:05:52.209 --> 00:05:54.230 he was driven. He got a second bachelor's degree, 00:05:54.410 --> 00:05:56.930 cum laude, in 1890 and then went straight into 00:05:56.930 --> 00:05:59.990 graduate studies. This all culminates in 1895 00:05:59.990 --> 00:06:02.649 when he becomes the first African -American to 00:06:02.649 --> 00:06:04.949 earn a Ph .D. from Harvard. And his dissertation 00:06:04.949 --> 00:06:06.910 was already pointing the way, wasn't it? It was 00:06:06.910 --> 00:06:08.829 on the suppression of the African slave trade. 00:06:09.110 --> 00:06:12.779 Yes. always using historical data to fight racist 00:06:12.779 --> 00:06:16.360 myths. But the step that really, truly globalized 00:06:16.360 --> 00:06:19.720 his thinking was his fellowship in Germany. In 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:22.600 1892, he went to study at the Friedrich Wilhelm 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:25.360 University in Berlin. That seems like a critical 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:27.620 moment for his intellectual maturing. It was 00:06:27.620 --> 00:06:29.519 where he said he intellectually came of age. 00:06:29.899 --> 00:06:32.699 He's studying under these giants of social science 00:06:32.699 --> 00:06:35.220 like Max Weber. He's traveling all over Europe. 00:06:35.339 --> 00:06:37.220 And for the first time in his life, he feels 00:06:37.220 --> 00:06:39.000 a kind of freedom he could never find in the 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:41.439 U .S. He famously wrote that in Europe, he felt 00:06:41.439 --> 00:06:44.420 simply like a man. Exactly. Imagine that. In 00:06:44.420 --> 00:06:47.120 America, he was always a problem, always categorized 00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:50.040 by race. In Europe, he was judged on his intellect. 00:06:50.459 --> 00:06:52.839 It gave him this external vantage point, a way 00:06:52.839 --> 00:06:54.920 to look in on... the American racial system as 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:57.399 an observer. It let him see race not just as 00:06:57.399 --> 00:07:00.100 an American problem, but as a global system built 00:07:00.100 --> 00:07:02.439 into Western civilization itself. Precisely. 00:07:02.459 --> 00:07:04.660 And the validation he got was huge. You mentioned 00:07:04.660 --> 00:07:06.600 Max Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology. 00:07:06.939 --> 00:07:10.300 Weber was deeply impressed. Years later, when 00:07:10.300 --> 00:07:12.740 other academics would bring up racist ideas about 00:07:12.740 --> 00:07:15.939 black inferiority, Weber would specifically point 00:07:15.939 --> 00:07:18.920 to Du Bois. as the counterexample. To have one 00:07:18.920 --> 00:07:22.819 of the pillars of European thought use your existence 00:07:22.819 --> 00:07:25.819 as a weapon against racism. I mean, that's powerful. 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:28.240 It's immense. So he comes back with this Harvard 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.000 PhD, this European training, and he immediately 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.459 starts pioneering a field we now just take for 00:07:33.459 --> 00:07:36.470 granted. empirical sociology. Which brings us 00:07:36.470 --> 00:07:39.509 to his work in Philadelphia. In 1896, he gets 00:07:39.509 --> 00:07:41.069 a research assignment from the University of 00:07:41.069 --> 00:07:44.170 Pennsylvania. His job is to study Philadelphia's 00:07:44.170 --> 00:07:46.490 Seventh Ward, an African -American community 00:07:46.490 --> 00:07:49.370 that was struggling with poverty and crime and 00:07:49.370 --> 00:07:51.769 was just buried under negative stereotypes. And 00:07:51.769 --> 00:07:54.230 this research becomes his first major book, The 00:07:54.230 --> 00:07:57.730 Philadelphia Negro, in 1899. A monumental work, 00:07:57.889 --> 00:08:00.649 just foundational. This was the first intensive 00:08:00.649 --> 00:08:02.949 scientific case study of a black community in 00:08:02.949 --> 00:08:05.509 the U .S. He didn't just sit in an office. He 00:08:05.509 --> 00:08:07.889 used rigorous methods, census data, surveys, 00:08:08.209 --> 00:08:10.269 social mapping. What did that social mapping 00:08:10.269 --> 00:08:12.089 actually look like? It sounds really ahead of 00:08:12.089 --> 00:08:14.790 its time. It was incredible. He literally mapped 00:08:14.790 --> 00:08:17.759 the community. block by block, noting businesses, 00:08:18.060 --> 00:08:20.939 churches, schools. He categorized households 00:08:20.939 --> 00:08:24.319 by their economic status. He conducted 5 ,000 00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:26.899 personal interviews. 5 ,000. And he used all 00:08:26.899 --> 00:08:29.920 this data to systematically prove that the community's 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:31.839 problems weren't because of some inherent racial 00:08:31.839 --> 00:08:34.860 inferiority. They were caused by social factors, 00:08:35.039 --> 00:08:38.379 poverty, lack of opportunity, and systemic white 00:08:38.379 --> 00:08:41.360 prejudice. He was using science to dismantle 00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:44.100 racism. And it's so important to note this predates 00:08:44.100 --> 00:08:47.080 the famous Chicago School of Sociology by decades. 00:08:47.379 --> 00:08:49.700 He was setting the standard. He absolutely was. 00:08:49.940 --> 00:08:52.179 And it's in this study that he first uses the 00:08:52.179 --> 00:08:55.320 phrase the submerged 10th to describe the struggling 00:08:55.320 --> 00:08:58.139 black underclass. Ah, so that's the origin. It 00:08:58.139 --> 00:09:00.440 is. He argued their condition was a direct result 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:02.600 of slavery and discrimination. And this idea 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:05.820 of a submerged 10th was the seed that would later 00:09:05.820 --> 00:09:09.039 grow into his much more famous and more. controversial 00:09:09.039 --> 00:09:11.879 concept of the talented 10th. So it wasn't just 00:09:11.879 --> 00:09:14.740 an elitist idea. It was a direct response to 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:17.340 the deep poverty he documented with his own eyes 00:09:17.340 --> 00:09:20.179 in Philadelphia. That's the key. It was a strategy 00:09:20.179 --> 00:09:22.960 for pulling that submerged 10th up. OK, so the 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:25.179 scientific foundation is there. But in part two, 00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:28.500 we start to see the Dubois that we really recognize 00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:31.600 today. the activist, the critic, the revolutionary. 00:09:32.059 --> 00:09:35.899 And the move to Atlanta University in 1897 seems 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.759 to be the catalyst. It was. He went there as 00:09:38.759 --> 00:09:41.019 a professor of history and economics, and even 00:09:41.019 --> 00:09:43.720 with very few resources, his output was just 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:45.980 extraordinary. He was publishing constantly, 00:09:46.039 --> 00:09:48.460 and he organized the annual Atlanta Conference 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:51.779 of Negro Problems. He was quickly becoming the 00:09:51.779 --> 00:09:54.100 preeminent black scholar in America. Which, of 00:09:54.100 --> 00:09:55.879 course, put him on a collision course with the 00:09:55.879 --> 00:09:58.039 other giant of the era. Booker T. Washington. 00:09:58.360 --> 00:10:01.659 Yes. This conflict basically defined black politics 00:10:01.659 --> 00:10:04.860 for the next 25 years. It was this parting of 00:10:04.860 --> 00:10:07.580 the ways, a deep philosophical split. So let's 00:10:07.580 --> 00:10:09.360 break that down. What was Washington's position? 00:10:09.460 --> 00:10:12.059 The Atlanta Compromise. Washington's argument 00:10:12.059 --> 00:10:14.179 was essentially one of accommodation. He told 00:10:14.179 --> 00:10:16.360 white leaders in the South that black Americans 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:18.500 would, for the time being, accept discrimination. 00:10:18.779 --> 00:10:21.220 They would accept segregation and disenfranchisement. 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:23.759 In exchange for what? In exchange for white support 00:10:23.759 --> 00:10:27.590 for basic practical education. industrial and 00:10:27.590 --> 00:10:30.350 agricultural skills. The idea was to build economic 00:10:30.350 --> 00:10:34.190 stability first in rural areas and postpone the 00:10:34.190 --> 00:10:36.690 fight for political rights. It was about pragmatic 00:10:36.690 --> 00:10:39.590 survival. And Du Bois, the Harvard and Berlin 00:10:39.590 --> 00:10:43.090 trained scholar, saw this as a terrible bargain. 00:10:43.330 --> 00:10:45.590 Utterly unacceptable. He demanded three things 00:10:45.590 --> 00:10:48.230 and they were non -negotiable. Full civil rights, 00:10:48.409 --> 00:10:50.850 full political representation, and higher liberal 00:10:50.850 --> 00:10:54.450 arts education for that leadership elite, the 00:10:54.450 --> 00:10:56.649 talented 10th. Because without educated leaders, 00:10:56.830 --> 00:10:58.889 the whole race would just remain subservient. 00:10:58.970 --> 00:11:00.649 That was his argument. You can't just build an 00:11:00.649 --> 00:11:02.669 economic foundation if you don't have the political 00:11:02.669 --> 00:11:04.529 and legal right to own the land it's built on. 00:11:04.610 --> 00:11:07.070 It was a fundamental disagreement over goals, 00:11:07.250 --> 00:11:10.049 over strategy, over timelines. But this philosophical 00:11:10.049 --> 00:11:12.549 debate was about to get intensely personal for 00:11:12.549 --> 00:11:14.970 Du Bois. It was a moment of shocking violence 00:11:14.970 --> 00:11:17.230 that ended his career as a detached academic. 00:11:17.769 --> 00:11:21.110 The lynching of Sam Hose in 1899. This is the 00:11:21.110 --> 00:11:23.590 pivotal emotional moment in his entire life. 00:11:24.339 --> 00:11:27.700 Sam Hose was a black farm worker accused of murder 00:11:27.700 --> 00:11:31.100 near Atlanta. He was tortured, mutilated, and 00:11:31.100 --> 00:11:33.620 then burned alive in front of a mob of thousands 00:11:33.620 --> 00:11:35.620 of people. And Dubois was planning to write about 00:11:35.620 --> 00:11:38.159 it, wasn't he? He was. He intended to write a 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:41.340 calm, factual defense of Hose for a local newspaper 00:11:41.340 --> 00:11:44.019 based on the evidence he had. But something happened 00:11:44.019 --> 00:11:46.440 on his way to the newspaper office. As he was 00:11:46.440 --> 00:11:48.360 walking through downtown Atlanta, he saw something 00:11:48.360 --> 00:11:51.659 in a storefront window. It was Sam Hose's knuckles, 00:11:51.759 --> 00:11:53.659 which had been cut off by someone in the mob. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:57.019 being openly displayed for sale. And that single 00:11:57.019 --> 00:12:00.860 image, just, it shattered his belief in detached 00:12:00.860 --> 00:12:03.440 science. He realized that intellectual truth, 00:12:03.580 --> 00:12:06.500 that data, that calm reason, it was completely 00:12:06.500 --> 00:12:08.960 powerless against that kind of visceral, public, 00:12:09.139 --> 00:12:11.740 celebrated brutality. The color line wasn't an 00:12:11.740 --> 00:12:14.320 academic concept anymore. It was marked by a 00:12:14.320 --> 00:12:17.340 piece of a man's body in a shop window. He wrote 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:19.789 later that the site convinced him he could not 00:12:19.789 --> 00:12:23.169 be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while 00:12:23.169 --> 00:12:25.730 Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved. 00:12:26.789 --> 00:12:29.690 His mission changed in that instant. It went 00:12:29.690 --> 00:12:32.289 from documenting truth to mobilizing people to 00:12:32.289 --> 00:12:34.750 act on that truth. Which leads directly to his 00:12:34.750 --> 00:12:37.289 great manifesto, The Souls of Black Folk, in 00:12:37.289 --> 00:12:39.990 1903. What kind of impact did that book have? 00:12:40.149 --> 00:12:42.889 It was an earthquake. James Weldon Johnson said 00:12:42.889 --> 00:12:45.110 it had an impact on educated African Americans 00:12:45.110 --> 00:12:48.440 similar to Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was the intellectual 00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:50.720 declaration of war for the new century. It's 00:12:50.720 --> 00:12:53.139 where he famously declares the problem of the 00:12:53.139 --> 00:12:55.340 20th century is the problem of the color line. 00:12:55.500 --> 00:12:59.039 Yes. Framing it as a global issue. And it's where 00:12:59.039 --> 00:13:01.840 he fully articulates double consciousness, giving 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:04.299 a name, a language to that internal struggle 00:13:04.299 --> 00:13:06.320 that millions of people were feeling but couldn't 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:08.299 necessarily define. Right. It helped them understand 00:13:08.299 --> 00:13:10.460 it wasn't a personal failing. It was a social 00:13:10.460 --> 00:13:13.409 condition imposed on them. Absolutely. And even 00:13:13.409 --> 00:13:15.330 the structure of the book itself was a radical 00:13:15.330 --> 00:13:18.090 statement. The epigraphs for each chapter. Exactly. 00:13:18.190 --> 00:13:21.649 Each chapter starts with two epigraphs, one from 00:13:21.649 --> 00:13:24.210 a famous white poet and one from a black spiritual. 00:13:25.159 --> 00:13:27.820 By placing the music of enslaved people on the 00:13:27.820 --> 00:13:30.440 same level as the high European tradition, he 00:13:30.440 --> 00:13:32.960 was making a powerful claim for intellectual 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:35.799 and cultural parity. So from the book to political 00:13:35.799 --> 00:13:38.879 action, this public break with Washington's philosophy 00:13:38.879 --> 00:13:42.519 leads to the Niagara Movement. Yes, in 1905, 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.840 Dubois... along with other activists like William 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:48.799 Monroe Trotter, met near Niagara Falls on the 00:13:48.799 --> 00:13:50.320 Canadian side because they couldn't get hotels 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:52.179 on the American side. Of course. And they wrote 00:13:52.179 --> 00:13:54.559 a declaration that explicitly rejected the Atlanta 00:13:54.559 --> 00:13:56.899 Compromise. They were demanding full equality 00:13:56.899 --> 00:13:59.419 immediately. No more waiting. But they had trouble 00:13:59.419 --> 00:14:02.080 getting their message out. A huge problem. Most 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:04.279 of the established black newspapers were controlled 00:14:04.279 --> 00:14:07.559 by allies of Booker T. Washington. So Dubois 00:14:07.559 --> 00:14:10.220 had to create his own platforms. He started two 00:14:10.220 --> 00:14:12.519 journals. the horizon being the most important, 00:14:12.700 --> 00:14:14.960 to publish his uncompromising arguments against 00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:17.220 submission. And events just kept proving his 00:14:17.220 --> 00:14:19.620 point. The Brownsville affair, the Atlanta race 00:14:19.620 --> 00:14:23.500 riots in 1906. Exactly. Those disasters showed 00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:26.080 that economic progress meant nothing without 00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:29.039 political rights and legal protection. It solidified 00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:32.120 his position. The time for quiet compromise was 00:14:32.120 --> 00:14:35.980 over. The era of organized, uncompromising demand 00:14:35.980 --> 00:14:39.169 had begun. That groundwork leads directly to 00:14:39.169 --> 00:14:41.450 his most lasting organizational achievement. 00:14:41.789 --> 00:14:44.190 So let's get into part three, how the Niagara 00:14:44.190 --> 00:14:46.909 Movement's philosophy grew into the most powerful 00:14:46.909 --> 00:14:49.309 civil rights organization in American history. 00:14:49.529 --> 00:14:51.570 The Niagara Movement itself was a bit too small, 00:14:51.710 --> 00:14:54.929 a bit underfunded to really last. But its core 00:14:54.929 --> 00:14:57.450 ideas were picked up by a larger group of black 00:14:57.450 --> 00:14:59.750 and white activists, which led to the founding 00:14:59.750 --> 00:15:01.929 of the National Association for the Advancement 00:15:01.929 --> 00:15:05.870 of Colored People, the NAACP, in 1910. And Dubois 00:15:05.870 --> 00:15:07.990 was there from the start. It's noted that he's 00:15:07.990 --> 00:15:09.590 the one who suggested using the word colored. 00:15:09.750 --> 00:15:11.990 Why was that specific word important to him? 00:15:12.070 --> 00:15:14.470 He was very deliberate. He wanted the organization's 00:15:14.470 --> 00:15:16.789 name to explicitly include dark -skinned people 00:15:16.789 --> 00:15:19.669 everywhere. It was a signal right from the beginning 00:15:19.669 --> 00:15:22.509 that for Dubois, the American fight against the 00:15:22.509 --> 00:15:24.730 color line was inseparable from the global fight 00:15:24.730 --> 00:15:27.009 against colonialism. He became the director of 00:15:27.009 --> 00:15:29.889 publicity and research, but his real power, his 00:15:29.889 --> 00:15:33.309 real voice, was the organization's monthly magazine, 00:15:33.570 --> 00:15:36.700 The Crisis. The crisis was his weapon. It was 00:15:36.700 --> 00:15:39.639 his megaphone. The first issue came out in late 00:15:39.639 --> 00:15:42.899 1910, and its goal was to show the danger of 00:15:42.899 --> 00:15:45.399 race prejudice. And it was a massive success. 00:15:45.600 --> 00:15:48.720 By 1920, it had a circulation of 100 ,000. That's 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:50.940 an incredible reach for the time. It made it 00:15:50.940 --> 00:15:53.480 maybe the single most influential African -American 00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:56.440 publication in the world. And Dubois used it 00:15:56.440 --> 00:15:58.779 to wage war on everything. What were some of 00:15:58.779 --> 00:16:00.860 the key campaigns he was fighting in its pages? 00:16:01.039 --> 00:16:03.919 Oh, everything. Scathing editorials against Jim 00:16:03.919 --> 00:16:06.600 Crow laws, against corruption in black institutions. 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:09.500 He even published historical essays that challenge 00:16:09.500 --> 00:16:12.039 white -centric history. But the number one campaign 00:16:12.039 --> 00:16:14.240 was against lynching. Right. He was pushing for 00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:16.799 a federal anti -lynching law. He was. And he 00:16:16.799 --> 00:16:20.019 often used this brutal, savage satire to make 00:16:20.019 --> 00:16:22.179 his point. He was trying to expose the moral 00:16:22.179 --> 00:16:24.080 hypocrisy of it all. And he wasn't afraid to 00:16:24.080 --> 00:16:26.059 use graphic evidence, which was just not done 00:16:26.059 --> 00:16:29.779 in mainstream journalism back then. No. The 1916 00:16:29.779 --> 00:16:32.679 Waco horror article is the prime example. It 00:16:32.679 --> 00:16:34.679 was about the torture and murder of a teenager 00:16:34.679 --> 00:16:37.720 named Jesse Washington. Dubois didn't just write 00:16:37.720 --> 00:16:40.000 about it. He sent an undercover investigator 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.700 to Waco, Texas, and he published the photographs 00:16:42.700 --> 00:16:44.860 of the lynching. That must have been unbelievably 00:16:44.860 --> 00:16:47.440 shocking for his readers. It was a radical act 00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:50.620 of journalistic courage. He forced people, white 00:16:50.620 --> 00:16:53.460 and black, to look at the sheer barbarism they 00:16:53.460 --> 00:16:55.899 were allowing to happen. And his advocacy wasn't 00:16:55.899 --> 00:16:58.379 limited to race. He was an early supporter of 00:16:58.379 --> 00:17:00.220 women's rights, wasn't he? He was a longtime 00:17:00.220 --> 00:17:02.909 supporter of women's suffrage. Now, he was critical 00:17:02.909 --> 00:17:05.190 of the movement because many of its white leaders 00:17:05.190 --> 00:17:07.309 refused to also fight against racial injustice. 00:17:07.650 --> 00:17:09.849 Of course. But his own publications consistently 00:17:09.849 --> 00:17:12.990 featured feminist essays. He saw the fight for 00:17:12.990 --> 00:17:15.369 women's rights and the fight for racial justice 00:17:15.369 --> 00:17:18.710 as two sides of the same coin. The fight for 00:17:18.710 --> 00:17:21.349 democracy. And he even took on taboo subjects 00:17:21.349 --> 00:17:24.490 like interracial marriage. That 1913 editorial 00:17:24.490 --> 00:17:27.529 against anti -miscegenation laws is just stunning. 00:17:27.769 --> 00:17:30.390 It's so powerful because of how he frames it. 00:17:30.619 --> 00:17:33.819 He doesn't just call the laws racist. He frames 00:17:33.819 --> 00:17:36.900 it as an issue of women's rights and legal protection 00:17:36.900 --> 00:17:40.079 for black women. How so? He argued that because 00:17:40.079 --> 00:17:42.920 a white man could not be legally compelled to 00:17:42.920 --> 00:17:46.319 marry a black woman. These laws essentially reduced 00:17:46.319 --> 00:17:49.700 black women to the position of dogs. It stripped 00:17:49.700 --> 00:17:52.180 them of any legal recourse if they were coerced 00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:55.420 or seduced. That's a brilliant legal and social 00:17:55.420 --> 00:17:57.920 argument. He was basically saying the fight isn't 00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:00.460 about wanting to marry white people. The fight 00:18:00.460 --> 00:18:02.839 is about demanding legal equality and protecting 00:18:02.839 --> 00:18:05.440 the dignity of black women. It was a radical 00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:07.920 demand for autonomy. So while he's fighting these 00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:10.480 battles at home through the crisis, he's also 00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:12.720 building his role as a global thinker, as the 00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:15.380 architect of Pan -Africanism. That global vision 00:18:15.380 --> 00:18:19.099 started very early. In 1900, he was at the first 00:18:19.099 --> 00:18:21.539 Pan -African conference in London. That's where 00:18:21.539 --> 00:18:23.599 he delivered his speech to the nations of the 00:18:23.599 --> 00:18:26.539 world, which contains that famous color line 00:18:26.539 --> 00:18:29.200 statement. He was pleading with European powers 00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:31.019 to grant self -government to their colonies. 00:18:31.339 --> 00:18:33.900 And he used his sociology skills on the world 00:18:33.900 --> 00:18:36.400 stage that same year, at the Paris Exposition. 00:18:36.880 --> 00:18:39.819 Yes, he organized the exhibit of American Negroes. 00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:43.059 And this wasn't just art. This was Dubois using 00:18:43.059 --> 00:18:45.960 data as a weapon against propaganda. He put together 00:18:45.960 --> 00:18:48.660 hundreds of photographs, charts, and graphs showing 00:18:48.660 --> 00:18:50.859 the economic and educational progress of the 00:18:50.859 --> 00:18:52.880 African -American community. He was literally 00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:55.240 showing off the achievements of Black America 00:18:55.240 --> 00:18:57.980 to an international audience using science to 00:18:57.980 --> 00:19:01.019 counter racist stereotypes. Exactly. It was a 00:19:01.019 --> 00:19:03.980 data -driven argument for full humanity, and 00:19:03.980 --> 00:19:07.410 it won a gold medal. This all led to his 1915 00:19:07.410 --> 00:19:10.089 book, The Negro, which was a history of black 00:19:10.089 --> 00:19:12.710 Africans that predicted the eventual global unity 00:19:12.710 --> 00:19:15.509 of people of color. Then World War I brings this 00:19:15.509 --> 00:19:18.269 really difficult moment, his 1918 close ranks 00:19:18.269 --> 00:19:20.990 editorial. Very controversial. He argued that 00:19:20.990 --> 00:19:23.150 African -Americans should set aside their grievances 00:19:23.150 --> 00:19:25.589 with Jim Crow for a moment and join the war effort 00:19:25.589 --> 00:19:28.150 to prove their loyalty to America. A stance he 00:19:28.150 --> 00:19:30.190 came to regret. He did, especially after what 00:19:30.190 --> 00:19:32.220 happened when the soldiers came home. The Red 00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:34.700 Summer of 1919 was a period of horrific white 00:19:34.700 --> 00:19:37.039 mob violence and race riots across the country. 00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:39.900 Over 300 African -Americans were killed. And 00:19:39.900 --> 00:19:42.259 he had already organized the silent parade in 00:19:42.259 --> 00:19:45.539 New York in 1917 to protest similar violence. 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:48.759 Right. Almost 9 ,000 African -Americans marching 00:19:48.759 --> 00:19:51.460 down Fifth Avenue in total silence. A massive, 00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:55.599 dignified protest. So after the war, his tone 00:19:55.599 --> 00:19:57.920 hardened completely. The Returning Soldiers editorial? 00:19:58.420 --> 00:20:01.059 It's militant. He basically tells black veterans 00:20:01.059 --> 00:20:03.700 to bring their fighting skills home and wage 00:20:03.700 --> 00:20:06.960 a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:09.839 the forces of hell in our own land. No more accommodation. 00:20:10.220 --> 00:20:12.660 And during the same period, he's got a major 00:20:12.660 --> 00:20:16.000 ideological rival in Marcus Garvey. A huge rivalry. 00:20:16.319 --> 00:20:19.119 Garvey was a black nationalist. He promoted racial 00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:21.220 separatism, economic independence, the Back to 00:20:21.220 --> 00:20:23.099 Africa movement. It was a completely different 00:20:23.099 --> 00:20:25.819 philosophy from Du Bois' integrationist, talented 00:20:25.819 --> 00:20:28.460 10th approach. Was there any common ground? Briefly. 00:20:29.220 --> 00:20:31.220 Dubois initially supported Garvey's shipping 00:20:31.220 --> 00:20:33.920 company, the Black Star Line. But the philosophical 00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.240 gap integration versus separatism was just too 00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:38.180 wide, and they were competing for the same pool 00:20:38.180 --> 00:20:40.380 of money and public support. It got pretty nasty 00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:43.359 between them. It did. Dubois called Garvey the 00:20:43.359 --> 00:20:46.460 most dangerous enemy of the Negro race. He supported 00:20:46.460 --> 00:20:49.779 the idea of Africa for the Africans, but he didn't 00:20:49.779 --> 00:20:51.640 think that meant it should be ruled by African 00:20:51.640 --> 00:20:53.680 -Americans who had no real connection to the 00:20:53.680 --> 00:20:56.380 continent. He saw Garvey's movement as reckless 00:20:56.380 --> 00:20:58.660 and distracting from the fight for rights in 00:20:58.660 --> 00:21:01.519 America. So as we move into the 1930s, Dubois' 00:21:01.700 --> 00:21:04.940 thinking shifts again. This is part four, a period 00:21:04.940 --> 00:21:08.099 of really intense political radicalization and 00:21:08.099 --> 00:21:10.200 revisionist history. Right. And it starts with 00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:13.880 another huge break. this time within the NAACP. 00:21:13.880 --> 00:21:17.160 By 1934, he's clashing badly with the new president, 00:21:17.299 --> 00:21:19.740 Walter White. And the core of the fight is Dubois' 00:21:20.019 --> 00:21:23.240 shocking reversal on segregation. This must have 00:21:23.240 --> 00:21:25.140 just stunned everyone. He started arguing in 00:21:25.140 --> 00:21:27.819 favor of separate but equal, the very thing the 00:21:27.819 --> 00:21:31.259 NAACP was created to destroy. He did. His logic 00:21:31.259 --> 00:21:34.160 was pragmatic, if controversial. Yeah. He argued 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:36.099 that the fight for integration just wasn't working. 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:37.799 That it seemed politically impossible for the 00:21:37.799 --> 00:21:39.759 time being. So what was his alternative? He said 00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:42.640 African -American. should tactically accept separate 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:45.339 schools and services, but use that separation 00:21:45.339 --> 00:21:48.400 as an opportunity to build their own independent, 00:21:48.539 --> 00:21:50.839 high -quality, black -controlled institutions, 00:21:51.079 --> 00:21:54.220 to build economic and cultural power from within. 00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:57.019 So he wasn't endorsing the racist idea behind 00:21:57.019 --> 00:22:00.019 it. He was proposing a tactical retreat to build 00:22:00.019 --> 00:22:03.480 strength. That's how he sought it. But the NAACP 00:22:03.480 --> 00:22:06.000 leadership saw it as a total betrayal. They said 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:08.420 it legitimized segregation and undermined all 00:22:08.420 --> 00:22:10.619 of their legal work. They demanded he take it 00:22:10.619 --> 00:22:13.480 back. He refused, and he resigned from the NAACP 00:22:13.480 --> 00:22:15.700 for the second time. So he goes back to academia, 00:22:15.859 --> 00:22:18.759 back to Atlanta University, and throws himself 00:22:18.759 --> 00:22:21.480 into what might be his most important scholarly 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:25.000 work. black reconstruction in America. This book, 00:22:25.119 --> 00:22:28.619 published in 1935, is his historical magnum opus. 00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:31.220 It was a direct assault on the dominant historical 00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:33.099 view of the time, which was called the Dunning 00:22:33.099 --> 00:22:35.319 School. And what was the Dunning School's argument 00:22:35.319 --> 00:22:37.779 about reconstruction? Their argument, which was 00:22:37.779 --> 00:22:40.519 deeply racist, was that the period after the 00:22:40.519 --> 00:22:43.700 Civil War failed because of Negro ignorance and 00:22:43.700 --> 00:22:46.940 corruption. It was the narrative used to justify 00:22:46.940 --> 00:22:49.799 Jim Crow. to justify taking away the right to 00:22:49.799 --> 00:22:52.279 vote. And DeBoer just demolishes that narrative 00:22:52.279 --> 00:22:55.579 with data. Completely flips it. His thesis was 00:22:55.579 --> 00:22:57.779 that Black people were the central revolutionary 00:22:57.779 --> 00:23:00.940 force in the Civil War and its aftermath. He 00:23:00.940 --> 00:23:02.940 showed that the brief period of Black political 00:23:02.940 --> 00:23:06.000 leadership actually achieved incredible democratic 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.539 goals, like creating the first public school 00:23:08.539 --> 00:23:11.500 systems in the South. He argued it wasn't a failure 00:23:11.500 --> 00:23:14.059 caused by black people, but a success that was 00:23:14.059 --> 00:23:16.660 violently overthrown by white reactionaries who 00:23:16.660 --> 00:23:19.400 were terrified of black political power. Precisely. 00:23:19.440 --> 00:23:22.099 The book was so radical that mainstream white 00:23:22.099 --> 00:23:24.920 historians just ignored it for decades. But today, 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:27.359 Black Reconstruction is seen as the foundational 00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:30.579 text of modern African -American historiography. 00:23:30.819 --> 00:23:32.759 And at the same time, the Great Depression is 00:23:32.759 --> 00:23:34.819 pushing his political thinking even further to 00:23:34.819 --> 00:23:37.200 the left. He starts to see capitalism itself 00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:41.380 as the engine of racism. He's reading Marx and 00:23:41.380 --> 00:23:43.660 finding his analysis of economic exploitation 00:23:43.660 --> 00:23:46.680 incredibly useful for explaining the subjugation 00:23:46.680 --> 00:23:49.460 of colored people all over the world. This global 00:23:49.460 --> 00:23:51.859 view leads to some very controversial travels 00:23:51.859 --> 00:23:56.420 in 1936 to Germany and Japan. His trip to Nazi 00:23:56.420 --> 00:23:59.180 Germany is complex. He noted that as a black 00:23:59.180 --> 00:24:02.299 man, he was treated with respect, but he was 00:24:02.299 --> 00:24:04.660 also absolutely horrified by the Nazi treatment 00:24:04.660 --> 00:24:07.559 of Jewish people. He called it an attack on civilization. 00:24:08.119 --> 00:24:10.420 But his view of Japan is much harder to square 00:24:10.420 --> 00:24:14.019 for a modern audience. It is. Du Bois saw the 00:24:14.019 --> 00:24:17.079 world through an anti -imperialist lens. And 00:24:17.079 --> 00:24:19.700 he saw Japan as the only non -white nation that 00:24:19.700 --> 00:24:21.599 could challenge the colonial power of Europe 00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:24.279 and America. So he visits Japanese -controlled 00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:26.880 Manchuria. It's a shocking statement, but it 00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:29.119 shows his perspective. He hoped that colonialism 00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:31.400 by a colored nation would be less oppressive 00:24:31.400 --> 00:24:34.339 than colonialism by white Europe. He was desperate 00:24:34.339 --> 00:24:37.200 for a non -white global power to emerge. That's 00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:39.180 a challenging idea, especially given what we 00:24:39.180 --> 00:24:42.160 know about Japanese brutality later. It is. And 00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:44.480 he was disturbed when Japan allied with Nazi 00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:47.559 Germany. But he blamed the West for it, arguing 00:24:47.559 --> 00:24:50.039 that their relentless hostility and racism had 00:24:50.039 --> 00:24:53.099 pushed Japan into that corner. For Du Bois, the 00:24:53.099 --> 00:24:55.220 hypocrisy of the West was always the root cause 00:24:55.220 --> 00:24:58.079 of these global conflicts. He comes back, publishes 00:24:58.079 --> 00:25:00.819 his second autobiography, Dusk of Dawn, in 1940. 00:25:01.400 --> 00:25:03.720 And by the end of World War II, his focus is 00:25:03.720 --> 00:25:06.519 totally international. He's back at the NAACP 00:25:06.519 --> 00:25:08.559 and at the founding of the United Nations in 00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:12.000 1945. And their goal at the UN was huge. They 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:14.400 wanted an end to the entire colonial system and 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:16.920 a guarantee of racial equality in the UN Charter. 00:25:16.980 --> 00:25:19.180 But they were ignored. Completely ignored by 00:25:19.180 --> 00:25:21.359 the colonial powers. But Du Bois didn't give 00:25:21.359 --> 00:25:23.720 up. He attended the final Pan -African Congress, 00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.420 where he met a young activist named Kwame Nkrumah 00:25:26.420 --> 00:25:28.420 from Ghana. And this all leads to a landmark 00:25:28.420 --> 00:25:31.940 petition in 1947. An appeal to the world. Yes. 00:25:32.259 --> 00:25:35.400 It was a formal petition, drafted by Dubois and 00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:37.720 submitted to the UN, detailing the human rights 00:25:37.720 --> 00:25:40.180 abuses against black citizens in the United States. 00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:43.380 It was a brilliant strategic move. It weaponized 00:25:43.380 --> 00:25:46.180 the Cold War, exposing American hypocrisy on 00:25:46.180 --> 00:25:48.720 a global stage and forcing the U .S. government 00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:51.039 to confront its own failures. So now we come 00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:53.359 to the final chapter of his life, part five, 00:25:53.400 --> 00:25:56.539 a period really defined by Cold War persecution 00:25:56.539 --> 00:25:59.700 and his final complete political radicalization. 00:25:59.799 --> 00:26:03.200 The late 1940s, the McCarthy era, it was a dangerous 00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:05.640 time. Anti -communist paranoia was everywhere. 00:26:05.960 --> 00:26:09.160 And the NAACP, to protect its funding and its 00:26:09.160 --> 00:26:11.640 reputation, started distancing itself from anyone 00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:14.000 with leftist sympathies. That included Dubois. 00:26:14.359 --> 00:26:16.640 But Dubois wouldn't back down. He kept his associations 00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.099 with people like Paul Robeson. He kept his critique 00:26:19.099 --> 00:26:21.319 of capitalism. Right. And he saw the Cold War 00:26:21.319 --> 00:26:23.660 as a fight between systems. And in his view, 00:26:23.759 --> 00:26:25.720 the Soviet Union, for all its faults, had at 00:26:25.720 --> 00:26:28.299 least officially rejected racial and class distinctions. 00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:30.819 He called it the most hopeful country on Earth 00:26:30.819 --> 00:26:33.279 from that perspective. This led to his final 00:26:33.279 --> 00:26:36.640 bitter resignation from the NAACP in 1948. And 00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:38.859 this is when the U .S. government starts to target 00:26:38.859 --> 00:26:41.759 him directly with what's been called ruthless 00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:45.190 repression. The FBI had a file on him since the 00:26:45.190 --> 00:26:49.170 40s, but it got serious in 1950. He became the 00:26:49.170 --> 00:26:51.190 chairman of the Peace Information Center, which 00:26:51.190 --> 00:26:53.769 was promoting the Stockholm appeal to ban nuclear 00:26:53.769 --> 00:26:56.250 weapons. A peace petition. A peace petition. 00:26:56.809 --> 00:27:00.250 And for this, in 1951, the Justice Department 00:27:00.250 --> 00:27:02.950 indicted Dubois and other leaders for failing 00:27:02.950 --> 00:27:05.809 to register as agents of a foreign state. They 00:27:05.809 --> 00:27:08.170 were accusing him of being a Soviet agent. Essentially, 00:27:08.210 --> 00:27:11.009 yes. It was a political show trial. And many 00:27:11.009 --> 00:27:14.319 of his old allies abandoned him. Even the NAACP 00:27:14.319 --> 00:27:16.500 refused to support him publicly. He was in his 00:27:16.500 --> 00:27:18.980 80s facing prison time. It must have been terrifying. 00:27:19.319 --> 00:27:21.559 Immense pressure. But the trial produced one 00:27:21.559 --> 00:27:23.299 of the most incredible stories of that whole 00:27:23.299 --> 00:27:26.119 era. During the trial, his lawyer mentioned to 00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:27.980 the judge that Albert Einstein had offered to 00:27:27.980 --> 00:27:30.740 fly in and serve as a character witness for Dr. 00:27:30.920 --> 00:27:33.339 DuBois. Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist 00:27:33.339 --> 00:27:35.539 on the planet. The prosecution's case just sort 00:27:35.539 --> 00:27:38.700 of evaporated. The judge dismissed the charges. 00:27:39.099 --> 00:27:41.890 But even though he won, The government got us 00:27:41.890 --> 00:27:44.950 revenge. They confiscated his passport and held 00:27:44.950 --> 00:27:47.410 it for eight years. And the professional cost 00:27:47.410 --> 00:27:49.390 of that was devastating. It meant he couldn't 00:27:49.390 --> 00:27:52.210 attend the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. 00:27:52.920 --> 00:27:55.299 This was the meeting of 29 newly independent 00:27:55.299 --> 00:27:58.359 nations from Africa and Asia. It was the absolute 00:27:58.359 --> 00:28:01.140 culmination of his entire life's work on Pan 00:28:01.140 --> 00:28:03.299 -Africanism. And he was forced to watch it from 00:28:03.299 --> 00:28:05.619 his home in Brooklyn. Excluded from his own legacy. 00:28:05.819 --> 00:28:07.779 It's just heartbreaking. Once he finally got 00:28:07.779 --> 00:28:10.140 his passport back in 1960, he started traveling 00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:13.400 again. Extensively. To the Soviet Union, to China. 00:28:13.500 --> 00:28:16.160 In 1961, he gave a famous speech in Beijing, 00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:19.059 urging a political alliance between African Americans 00:28:19.059 --> 00:28:22.299 and China. saying, China is colored and knows 00:28:22.299 --> 00:28:24.700 to what a colored skin in this modern world subjects 00:28:24.700 --> 00:28:27.220 its owner. Which sets the stage for his final 00:28:27.220 --> 00:28:31.000 definitive political act at age 93. In October 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:34.319 1961, in protest of a new repressive law targeting 00:28:34.319 --> 00:28:36.819 communists, Dubois officially joined the Communist 00:28:36.819 --> 00:28:39.680 Party. He joined the very organization that the 00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:41.859 government had used to persecute him. An ultimate 00:28:41.859 --> 00:28:44.859 act of defiance. He wrote that he believed in 00:28:44.859 --> 00:28:47.920 communism as a planned way of life, designed 00:28:47.920 --> 00:28:50.200 for building a state whose object is the highest 00:28:50.200 --> 00:28:53.680 welfare of its people. For him, it was the final 00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:56.480 rejection of the capitalist system he saw as 00:28:56.480 --> 00:28:58.859 the root of the color line. And his last chapter 00:28:58.859 --> 00:29:01.660 closes that circle, taking his Pan -African vision 00:29:01.660 --> 00:29:05.059 back to Africa. His old acquaintance, Kwame Nkrumah, 00:29:05.240 --> 00:29:07.140 was now the president of a newly independent 00:29:07.140 --> 00:29:10.079 Ghana. And he invited Dubois to move there and 00:29:10.079 --> 00:29:13.079 oversee a massive project, the Encyclopedia Africana. 00:29:13.240 --> 00:29:16.059 So he and his wife Shirley moved in 1961. They 00:29:16.059 --> 00:29:18.440 did. And in 1963, when the U .S. government refused 00:29:18.440 --> 00:29:21.160 to renew his passport again, he made his final 00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:23.460 symbolic break and became a citizen of Ghana. 00:29:23.859 --> 00:29:27.480 He died in Accra on August 27, 1963. Just the 00:29:27.480 --> 00:29:29.720 timing. His death was one day before the March 00:29:29.720 --> 00:29:32.720 on Washington. One day. And Roy Wilkins, the 00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:35.079 head of the NAACP, stood at the Lincoln Memorial 00:29:35.079 --> 00:29:37.960 and asked that massive crowd to observe a moment 00:29:37.960 --> 00:29:40.220 of silence for him, the man who had laid the 00:29:40.220 --> 00:29:42.339 philosophical groundwork for that very moment. 00:29:43.039 --> 00:29:45.579 The final irony is that the Civil Rights Act 00:29:45.579 --> 00:29:49.019 of 1964, which finally enacted so many of the 00:29:49.019 --> 00:29:51.920 rights he fought for his entire life, was passed 00:29:51.920 --> 00:29:54.619 almost exactly a year after he died. So to try 00:29:54.619 --> 00:29:57.650 and summarize a life that big... It's like his 00:29:57.650 --> 00:30:01.390 career had three distinct but connected phases. 00:30:01.549 --> 00:30:03.769 I think that's right. First, you have the foundational 00:30:03.769 --> 00:30:06.549 sociologist of the 19th century, the Philadelphia 00:30:06.549 --> 00:30:10.099 Negro. using hard data to dismantle racist science. 00:30:10.279 --> 00:30:12.720 Then second, he's the radical activist and journalist 00:30:12.720 --> 00:30:15.480 of the early 20th century, the NAACP, the crisis, 00:30:15.660 --> 00:30:17.440 giving us the language of double consciousness 00:30:17.440 --> 00:30:19.839 and the strategy of the talented 10th. And third, 00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:22.359 he becomes the radical global historian and pan 00:30:22.359 --> 00:30:25.000 -Africanist, Black Reconstruction rewriting American 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:27.160 history and connecting the struggle at home to 00:30:27.160 --> 00:30:29.539 the global fight against colonialism and capitalism. 00:30:30.059 --> 00:30:32.359 It's just amazing that one person contained all 00:30:32.359 --> 00:30:35.619 of that. Academic, writer, organizer, global 00:30:35.619 --> 00:30:38.660 citizen. And yet he was also this man of very 00:30:38.660 --> 00:30:42.119 specific personal dignity. Oh, absolutely. Insisting 00:30:42.119 --> 00:30:45.579 on being called Dr. Dubois, a title he had earned 00:30:45.579 --> 00:30:48.140 against impossible odds. He was famously disciplined 00:30:48.140 --> 00:30:50.819 and meticulous. And of course, that insistence 00:30:50.819 --> 00:30:53.509 on the correct pronunciation. And its entire 00:30:53.509 --> 00:30:55.890 legacy is about that, about insisting on intellectual 00:30:55.890 --> 00:30:58.490 excellence as a weapon against oppression. The 00:30:58.490 --> 00:31:00.970 honors he received, the library named after him 00:31:00.970 --> 00:31:03.769 at UMass Amherst, they all point to a life lived 00:31:03.769 --> 00:31:05.970 in constant, brilliant defiance of the color 00:31:05.970 --> 00:31:09.109 line. His real contribution was giving us the 00:31:09.109 --> 00:31:11.490 words, the framework for understanding it all, 00:31:11.529 --> 00:31:13.910 for understanding modern race relations, not 00:31:13.910 --> 00:31:16.369 just in America, but as part of a global system 00:31:16.369 --> 00:31:18.849 rooted in colonialism. Which brings us back to 00:31:18.849 --> 00:31:21.690 his core idea. that the problem of the 20th century 00:31:21.690 --> 00:31:24.029 is the problem of the color line. If you look 00:31:24.029 --> 00:31:25.930 at the world today, at the global disparities 00:31:25.930 --> 00:31:29.190 in wealth and power that still map so closely 00:31:29.190 --> 00:31:32.150 to those old colonial and racial lines he identified 00:31:32.150 --> 00:31:35.529 100 years ago. You have to ask, how much of our 00:31:35.529 --> 00:31:38.009 modern global economic system is still quietly 00:31:38.009 --> 00:31:40.410 running on the same colonial software he worked 00:31:40.410 --> 00:31:43.210 so hard to dismantle? It's a question that suggests 00:31:43.210 --> 00:31:45.710 Du Bois' vision of justice is still, in many 00:31:45.710 --> 00:31:47.490 ways, waiting for us in the future.