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Scholar and activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. Du Bois) was born on February 23rd, 1868.

He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and entered Harvard University to obtain his masters. Afterwards, he studied abroad at the University of Berlin.

In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph. D. from Harvard University. In 1899 Du Bois published his first landmark study, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study.

This marked the beginning of his writing career and it was the first case study of an African American community.

In the year 1909. Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He served as editor of the organization’s monthly magazine, The Crisis.

W.E.B. Du Bois passed away on August 27th, 1963, just one day before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”

“When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.” – W.E.B. Du Bois
Information obtained from Biography