W.E.B. Du Bois, born on February 23, 1868, three years after the Civil War ended slavery in America, became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard after studying at Fisk University in Tennessee and Humboldt University in Berlin. As a professor and writer, he produced a torrent of scholarship that revolutionized the study of American history and culture by putting African Americans at its center, and his The Souls of Black Folk (1903) was hailed by James Weldon Johnson as having a greater impact upon and within the Negro race than any other single book published in this country since Uncle Tom's Cabin. Beginning in 1905, he helped organize the annual meetings known as the Niagara Movement, which led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, and he edited its monthly magazine, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1934. A prolific writer and organizer, he campaigned tirelessly to end racial discrimination in America and to begin self-determination for the peoples of Africa. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, at age 95, on the eve of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Courtesy Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: Cosmos Mariner