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Creator
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963
Call number
Sc MG 109
Physical description
0.21 linear feet (1 box)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
[Item], W.E.B. Du Bois papers, Sc MG 109, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

The W.E.B Du Bois collection consists of a small body of speeches, articles, correspondence, and related material primarily authored by Du Bois. Of special interest is a typescript, with editorial comments, of the first two chapters of Du Bois's autobiography Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940-1942). The collection also includes a typescript of an article entitled "Miscegenation" (1935). There are thirteen speeches and a book review, ranging in subject matter from "The Talented Tenth", a tribute to Dr. Carter F. Woodson, race relations, labor issues, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Mahatma Gandhi. One of the speeches, "What the Negro Wants in 1948", was delivered at a meeting of the NAACP.

Biographical/historical information

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an influential intellectual, professor, editor, writer, and Pan-Africanist. Born in 1868, he received a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1888, and by 1895, he had received three degrees from Harvard University, culminating with the Ph.D. (the first African American to do so). Du Bois taught economics and history at Atlanta University (1897-1910).

This civil rights leader and scholar founded the Niagara Movement in opposition to the conservative policies of Booker T. Washington. One of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, Du Bois served as that organization's director of publications and editor of Crisis magazine until 1934. From 1944-1948 he headed the NAACP's special research department. He authored a great number of books, articles, and essays. A socialist, in 1961, he joined the Communist Party in the United States and that same year emigrated to Ghana. There he became editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois died in Accra in 1963 at the age of 95.

Scope and arrangement

The W.E.B Du Bois collection consists of a small body of speeches, articles, correspondence, and related material primarily authored by Du Bois. Of special interest is a typescript, with editorial comments, of the first two chapters of Du Bois's autobiography Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940-1942). The collection also includes a typescript of an article entitled "Miscegenation" (1935). There are thirteen speeches and a book review, ranging in subject matter from "The Talented Tenth", a tribute to Dr. Carter F. Woodson, race relations, labor issues, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Mahatma Gandhi. One of the speeches, "What the Negro Wants in 1948", was delivered at a meeting of the NAACP.

The correspondence primarily consists of letters with Arthur Schomburg regarding a variety of subjects (1911-1931), and Catherine Latimer and Jean Blackwell Hutson of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History of the New York Public Library, concerning the donation of material (1949-1957). The collection also includes a program for a dinner in honor of Du Bois (1924) and a paper by Immanuel Gein entitled "Early Pan-Africanism" in which an analysis of several Pan-African Congresses, as well as Du Bois's life and personality, are presented (1966).

Administrative information

Custodial history

Items, donated by a variety of individuals, gathered into an artificial collection by staff of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Source of acquisition

SCM 77-80 donated by W.E.B Du Bois in 1942. SCM 82-63 purchased from Lambeth Books in 1982. SCM 82-80 provenance unknown. SCM 88-73 donated by Thelma Y. Carroll in 1988.

Processing information

Processed by Janice Quinter, November 6, 2003

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Second Floor