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How W.E.B. Du Bois Changed Forever the Way Americans Think About Themselves
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred and Mary Silvina (née Burghardt) Du Bois. Mary Silvina Burghardt's family was part of the very small free black population of Great Barrington, having long owned land in the state; she was descended from Dutch, African and English ancestors. William Du Bois's maternal great-grandfather was Tom Burghardt, a slave (born in West Africa around 1730) who was held by the Dutch colonist Conraed Burghardt. Tom briefly served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, which may have been how he gained his freedom. Tom's son Jack Burghardt was the father of Othello Burghardt, who was the father of Mary Silvina Burghardt. William Du Bois's paternal great-grandfather was an ethnic French-American, James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York, who fathered several children with slave mistresses.[5] One of James' mixed-race sons was Alexander, who traveled to Haiti, and fathered a son, Alfred, with a mistress there. Alexander returned to Connecticut, leaving Alfred in Haiti with his mother.[6] Alfred moved to the United States sometime before 1860, and married Mary Silvina Burghardt on February 5, 1867, in Housatonic, Massachusetts.[6] Alfred left Mary in 1870, two years after William was born.[7] William's mother worked to support her family (receiving some assistance from her brother and neighbors), until she experienced a stroke in the early 1880s. She died in 1885.[8] Great Barrington's primarily European American community treated Du Bois generally well. He attended the local integrated public school and played with white schoolmates, though the racism he experienced even in this context would be one of the subjects of his later adult writing. Teachers encouraged his intellectual pursuits, and his rewarding experience with academic studies led him to believe that he could use his knowledge to empower African Americans.[9] When Du Bois decided to attend college, the congregation of his childhood church, the First Congregational Church of Great Barrington, donated money for his tuition. Relying on money donated by neighbors, Du Bois attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1885 to 1888.[12] His travel to and residency in the South was Du Bois's first experience with Southern racism, which encompassed Jim Crow laws, bigotry, and lynchings.[13] After receiving a bachelor's degree from Fisk, he attended Harvard College (which did not accept course credits from Fisk) from 1888 to 1890, where he was strongly influenced by his professor William James, prominent in American philosophy.[14] Du Bois paid his way through three years at Harvard with money from summer jobs, an inheritance, scholarships, and loans from friends. In 1890, Harvard awarded Du Bois his second bachelor's degree, cum laude, in history.[15] In 1891, Du Bois received a scholarship to attend the sociology graduate school at Harvard.[16] In 1892, Du Bois received a fellowship from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen to attend the University of Berlin for graduate work.[17] While a student in Berlin, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. He came of age intellectually in the German capital, while studying with some of that nation's most prominent social scientists, including Gustav von Schmoller, Adolph Wagner and Heinrich von Treitschke.[18] After returning from Europe, Du Bois completed his graduate studies; in 1895 he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.[19] In the summer of 1894, Du Bois received several job offers, including one from the prestigious Tuskegee Institute; he accepted a teaching job at Wilberforce University in Ohio.[21] At Wilberforce, Du Bois was strongly influenced by Alexander Crummell, who believed that ideas and morals are necessary tools to effect social change.[22] While at Wilberforce, Du Bois married Nina Gomer, one of his students, on May 12, 1896.[23] After two years at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a one-year research job from the University of Pennsylvania as an "assistant in sociology" in the summer of 1896.[24] He performed sociological field research in Philadelphia's African-American neighborhoods, which formed the foundation for his landmark study, The Philadelphia Negro, published two years later while he was teaching at Atlanta University. It was the first case study of a black community.
W.E.B. Du Bois: Activist Leader in Niagara Movement & Co-Founder of the NAACP
Watch a short video biography of W.E.B Du Bois, the black scholar and activist who led the Niagara Movement and cofounded the NAACP.
Colonial crimes | DW Documentary
For more than a century, people were taken from their homelands and exhibited in human zoos. They were displayed alongside animals. This little known and deeply disturbing part of colonial history played an important part in the development of modern racism. Between 1810 and 1940, nearly 35 thousand people were exhibited in world fairs, colonial exhibitions, zoos, freak shows, circuses and reconstructed ethnic villages in Europe, America and Japan. Some 1.5 billion visitors attended these events. Using previously unpublished archive material this documentary traces how racism was constructed and disseminated in these so-called ‘human zoos’. Children, women and men were displayed like exotic animals, and ordered in a hierarchy of "races." They were cast as ‘Other’ in a manner that served to justify colonialism, and described as ‘savage’. It is a little known and deeply disturbing part of colonial history. Only a handful of the thousands of men and women recruited from the four corners of the Earth ever managed to tell their experiences. This documentary tells the story of six of them: Tambo, an Aboriginal from Australia; Kalina from French Guiana; Ota Benga, a Pygmy from Congo; and Marius Kaloïe, a Kanak from New Caledonia. This documentary interviews historians and other experts to trace the connection between human zoos and racism. This piece of human history becomes tangible through the biographies of six victims: Petite Capeline, an aboriginal of Tierra del Fuego; Tambo, an Australian aborigine; Moliko Kalina from French Guiana; Ota Benga, a pygmy from Congo; Jean Thiam, a Wolof from Senegal; and Marius Kaloie from New Caledonia. Their lives are portrayed in the historical context of the rise of the great colonial powers thanks to the work of historians and the help of their descendants. Analysis and commentary by knowledgeable experts also explore the origins of racism at the transition from supposedly scientific racism to everyday racism.
Blacks, Blues, Black! Episode 5: African History | KQED Arts
Episode 5 of a 10-part TV series made by Dr. Maya Angelou for KQED in 1968 called Blacks, Blues, Black!, which examines the influence of African American culture on modern American society. Includes scenes of Dr. Angelou in the studio explaining why she feels it's essential to teach students a fully balanced account of African history. She states: "It is important that black Americans understand today that we ... must not fall into that trap of being sub-human or super human ... We have been as good as any human being can be. And we have been as bad as any human being can be." She uses poetry, music and historical images to illustrate her argument, as well as a panel discussion which includes reflections from Karen Richardson, introduced as the daughter of Julian and Raye Richardson of the "Success Book Store" (now known as Marcus Bookstore). Also features views of Dr. Angelou visiting a store in San Francisco which stocks traditional African art, clothing and jewelry. This episode was written and produced by Dr. Maya Angelou and directed by Robert Hagopian.
James Baldwin & Nikki Giovanni, a conversation
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.(born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution." James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. Some of Baldwin's essays are book-length, including The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976). An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award–nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. Baldwin's novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only African Americans, but also gay and bisexual men, while depicting some internalized obstacles to such individuals' quests for acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, written in 1956, well before the gay liberation movement. Soul! or SOUL! (1967–1971 or 1967–1973) was a pion
Donahue: Black Against Black Prejudice (1994)
Presents a discussion of some of the prejudicial attitudes blacks have towards other blacks.