When I was growing up, W.E.B. Du Bois was a household name. My dad never missed an opportunity to remind us he wrote his undergraduate dissertation on him, which meant many of Du Bois’s ideas trickled down into our conversations.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a leading Black intellectual of the Progressive Era (and beyond). He was the first Black man to receive a PhD from Harvard, helped cofound the NAACP, and, over his 60-year career, published some of the most important literature on race relations in America.
I grew up knowing about Du Bois not only because of my father, but also because his ideas still informed Black identity. As a radical opponent of assimilationist ideology and an early proponent of Black autonomy, Du Bois represented the defiant, self-sufficient streak of Black American identity.
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