The Disadvantaged Many: "Why?"

By Paul Andrew Bourne, MSc. (candidate);BSc. (Hons); Dip Edu.


William Edward Burghardt DuBois, to his admirers, was by spirited devotion and scholarly dedication, an attacker of injustice and a defender of freedom
Gerald C. Hynes


W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) DuBois was born to Alfred and Mary Burghardt DuBois on February 23, 1868 in a small New England village of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, United States, where the African American community was small in numbers but were very well respected (McKissack 17). DuBois' father, Alfred, left the family home for good when DuBois was young (i.e. left home soon after he was born) and so he was raised by his mother, Mary (McKissack 16). He was the only child for his mother, Mary, who emphasized education and hard work as the vehicle of social mobility and success. DuBois was the first African American to have graduated of his class and the foremost African American to have graduated in Great Barrington (DuBois 99).

Because Fisk University was not located in Great Barrington but to the South, DuBois had to relocate to Tennessee where he first experienced overt segregation and racism. Although W. E. B. DuBois was experiencing segregation, he was still able to surround himself with educated African-Americans and liberal whites who were instrumental in awakening the social consciousness within this young man. He later posits, "I was tossed boldly into the ?'Negro Problem' . . . I suddenly came to a region where the world was split into white and black halves, and where the darker half was held back by race prejudice and legal bonds, as well as by deep ignorance and dire poverty" (DuBois 108). This may have begun the social reformist consciousness within DuBois and may have propelled the willing to use himself as an example to both the white and black races.

On graduating from Fisk University in 1888 with a BA in Philosophy, between 1888 and 1890, he entered Harvard University as a junior and received a B.A cum laude. DuBois did post graduate work at Harvard University between 1890 and 1892 where he pursued and successfully completed a M.A in sociology. He was angered by his ex-president Rutherford B Hayes's assertion that he (Rutherford Hayes) could not find a worthy student to take advantage of a fund to educate Negro students. This assertion angered DuBois, the later reformist and social activist, greatly and so he applied directly to Hayes and was given the grant.

While DuBois was at Harvard University, he distant himself from the system, he felt the purpose of him being there was to "Improve the condition of the race as a whole" (McKissack, 30). DuBois was so adamant about the segregation that while at Harvard, he chose not to socialize with many of the other Harvard students, choosing instead to spend his time with the African-American in Boston, encasing himself in a completely coloured world (DuBois, 136). It was during that period that DuBois solidified his belief that education was the cure of his people. He believed that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line, the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the seas" ( Weinberg, 81). As such, DuBois theorize that education was the only way the African-American will save themselves from poverty and racism. In 1896, he was awarded a PhD from Harvard; his dissertation read "Suppression of the African Slave Trade" (DuBois). He was the first African American to have received a Ph.D. from the University (Harvard).

Between 1892 and 1895, while completing his doctorial dissertation, DuBois brilliantly projected the possibility of subjecting to scientific scrutiny the problem of race in the modern world. This inevitably placed DuBois in an irreparable conflict with the social Darwinism, and the hereditarianism research programme which attempted to verify it. Between 1897 and 1914, Dubois conducted numerous studies of black society in America, he published 16 research papers. He began his investigations believing that social science could provide answers to race problems. Gradually he concluded that in a climate of virulent racism, social change could only be accomplished by agitation and protest. These were the dominant ?'ideoshanal' and research paradigms on race matters with Anglo American social psychology of the time. Both actively capitulated and apologized for racism, both vigorously supported class exploitation; each claimed that social structure and social behaviour for the consequences of inherited genetic characteristics.

DuBois began his academic and public careers at a time when the forces of reaction had achieved political, ?'ideoshanal' and cultural supremacy in the United States. It was within this background that he began his long journey in pursuit of the truth. He taught that this truth could be studied through scientific investigation. Scientific rigor and an unbending partisanship to the cause of African-American equality defined the part he chose. In retrospect, Du Bois' scientific effort has prevailed over both Herbert Spencer's and Francis Galton's research programme of scientific racism. W. E. B. DuBois brought back the German scientific ideal from the University of Berlin and was one of the first to initiate scientific sociological study in the United States.

Dr DuBois thrust eagerly and indepthly into research. He believed that the race problem (segregation and white racism) was one of ignorance. So, he was determined to unearth scientific knowledge as much as he could, thereby provide the "cure" for color prejudice. Williams' unrelenting research led into historical investigation, statistical and anthropological measurement, and sociological interpretation. The outcome of this exhaustive endeavor was published as The Philadelphia Negro (Hynes). "It revealed the Negro group as a symptom, not a cause; as a striving, palpitating group, and not an inert, sick body of crime; as a long historic development and not a transient occurrence." This was the first time such a scientific approach to studying social phenomena was undertaken.

On the completion of the study (the scientific observation of The Philadelphia Negro), he accepted a position at Atlanta University to further his teachings in sociology. For approximately thirteen (13) years there DuBois wrote and intensely studied the Negro morality, urbanization, Negroes in business, college-bred Negroes, the Negro church, and Negro crime. William DuBois also repudiated the widely held view of Africa as a vast cultural cipher by presenting a historical version of complex, cultural development throughout Africa. His works left no issue unturned in an effort to promote and help social reform. Many argue that because of DuBois' outpouring of information "there was no study made of the race problem in America which did not depend in some degree upon the investigations made at Atlanta University."

"When will society propel the Blacks to place of 'true' status within this world?"