1897: W. E. B. Du Bois
Big Idea
W.E.B. Du Bois’ research challenged prevailing White “research” that argued it had scientifically proven Black inferiority. He introduced a more scientific method for conducing social research, becoming the father of modern sociology.
What’s important to know?
Brilliant Writer and Defender of Black Human and Civil Rights: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois became one of the leading voices for the rights of marginalized people across the globe.
Father of Modern Sociology: W. E. B. Du Bois developed new, scientific ways to conduct sociological research, challenging the careless thinking and stereotypes that supported racist views about Black people and culture.
1: Brilliant Writer and Defender of Black Human and Civil Rights
Born in 1868 just three years after the conclusion of the Civil War, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois became one of the leading voices for African rights across the globe. He grew up in Greater Barrington, Massachusetts and graduated from high school at the top of his class at 16. He wrote of his early early life, “I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation which began the freeing of American Negro slaves” (Williams, 2023, p. 5). A brilliant and focused man, he wrote of his life’s purpose “I therefore take the work that the Unknown lay in my hands and work for the rise of the Negro people, taking for granted that their best development means the best development of the world".” He continued that he would work, “to make a name in science, to make a name in literature and thus to raise my race” (p. 6).
When he published one of his seminal works, The Souls of Black Folk, he claimed the position as America’s leading voices on Black life and thought in the twentieth-century. One of his most oft-quoted lines comes from this work: “the problem of the Twentieth-Century… [is] the problem of the color line” (p. 8).
Historian Chad Williams described Du Bois’ book in this way: “he demonstrated that Black people were not a ‘problem’ to be resolved but a proud, gifted race, full of triumphs and sorrows, tragedies and hopes, pain and faith” (p. 9).
2: Father of Modern Sociology
W.E.B. Du Bois
Image Source: Wikipedia
In 1897, as a rising scholar, Du Bois accepted a position at the historically Black college, Atlanta University. Two years later he published one of his seminal works, The Philadelphia Negro, where he discussed his research and findings after spending two years studying African American communities in Philadelphia. His work challenged prevailing racist views and laid out for the sociological field a more scientifically rigorous method of conducting social research.
Du Bois became one of the most influential sociologists of the late nineteenth- early twentieth centuries. He shaped sociology into the scientifically rigorous discipline we know today (Morris, 2015, p. 2).
Du Bois critiqued early 1900 sociology as filled with “vague statements and vast generalizations” (Green, Wortham, 2018, p. 58). In contrast to White scholars at the time, Du Bois argued that race was a social construct and asserted that “‘the Negro problem was a matter of systematic investigation and intelligent understanding… The cure for it was knowledge based on scientific investigation’” (Green, Wortham, 2018, p. 58). As a result of his belief that “social conditions constituted the foundations of race oppression and white supremacy,” he “insisted that the newly emerging social sciences be built on careful empirical research focused on human action in order to pass the test as genuine science” (Morris, 2015, p. 3).
“One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
As noted by sociologist Aldon D. Morris (2015),
Because he believed that an authentic social science was possible and that inferior and superior races did not exist, Du Bois was the first social scientist to establish a sociological laboratory where systematic empirical research was conducted to determine the scientific causes of racial inequality. In this manner, Du Bois treated claims of inherent race superiority as hypotheses to be accepted or rejected on the basis of data collected through the best scientific methods available. Given his approach, Du Bois decried any racial findings stemming from racial prejudice and vested interest. Therefore, as the twentieth century opened, Du Bois continued to develop a sociology whose mission was to interject science into the emerging field by relying on data and the execution of scientific research based on empirical methodologies. (p. 3)
Students
Want to learn more? Watch this video about W.E.B. Du Bois.
Black History Icons: Facts about W.E.B. Du Bois
Du Bois fundamentally altered the trajectory of modern sociology, and he did so while fighting systemic racism. Through introducing a rigorous empirical methodology, he effectively led the way to dismantle the flawed and racist system that claimed Black people created their own problems. As such, Du Bois remains one of the pre-eminent sociologists of the twentieth century and his work continues to influence the field today.
Community Members
Did you know? On July 28, 1917, W.E.B. Du Bois, with the NAACP, organized a silent march in New York City in solidarity with the victims of the East St. Louis riots and to protest the ongoing lynching mobs that continued to viciously attack and kill Black men and women across the country.
The New-York Tribune (New York, NY), July 29, 1917, Page 13, Image 13.
Image Source: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.
Your Turn
Why was W.E.B. Du Bois so committed to the study of sociology? How did he feel this work would elevate African Americans in the United States?
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Explore W.E.B. Du Bois’ digitized books and papers.
Read more about W.E.B. Du Bois at Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery.
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Teaching The Souls of Black Folk (upper level high school, first year undergraduate students)
Teaching Du Bois’ papers from the NEH EDSITEment website.
Zinn Education Project on Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction in America.
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General Resources:
W. E. B. DU BOIS ON THE EAST ST. LOUIS RACE RIOT OF 1917 “Of Work and Wealth,” Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, 1920; EXCERPTS.
Books & Articles:
Womack, Angela Rene, "Variations in Black Media Coverage of the East St. Louis Race Riot" (2018). MSU Graduate Theses. 3274. https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3274
Archives:
Crises Magazine Collection from the State Historical Society of Missouri.
Museums & State Parks:
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Du Bois, W.E.B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. New York.
Gooding-Williams, R. (2011). In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America. Harvard University Press.
Marable, M. (2004). W. E. B. DuBois: Black Radical Democrat. Routledge.
Shaw, S. J. (2013). W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk. The University of North Carolina Press.
Wright II, E. (2016). The First American School of Sociology: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory. Routledge.
——-. (2020). Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology. University of Cincinnati Press.
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Du Bois, W. E. B. A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. International Press.
Green, D. and Wortham, R. (2018, February) The sociological insight of W.E.B. Du Bois. Sociological Inquiry, 88(1), 56–78.
Morris, A. (2015). The scholar denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the birth of modern sociology. University of California Press.