Sociologist, Writer, Historian and Pan Africanist Civil Rights Activist W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. He wrote extensively and was the best-known spokesperson for African American rights during the first half of the 20th century. Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
After a long, full life of academia and the pursuit of civil rights for African Americans, Dr. DuBois died in self-imposed exile, in Accra, Ghana, at the age of 95, on August 27, 1963, the eve of The March on Washington, DC.