Black Stars of the Harlem Renaissance
Chapter One
W. E. B.
DU BOIS
(1868 - 1963)
* * *
William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois, one of the greatest
scholars the world has ever known, and leader of the New Negro
movement, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts.
His father, Alfred Du Bois, died before Will was old enough to
remember him. His mother, Mary Silvina Du Bois, had to struggle to
make ends meet for herself and her son.
When she passed away in 1884, young Du Bois went to work in a
local mill. He continued to excel at Great Barrington High School,
where he was the only black student. He graduated the same year his
mother died. A few months later, the principal helped arrange a
church scholarship for him to attend Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee.
Du Bois arrived at Fisk in the fall of 1885, and he never forgot his
first day there: "It was to me an extraordinary experience," he wrote. "I
was thrilled to be for the first time among so many people of my own
color or rather of such various and such extraordinary colors...."
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