black history month powerpoint

1. W.E.B. Du Bois

2. The Early Life of W.E.B Du bois
● Born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington
● Du Bois was born into a relatively integrated
community and did not see much racism directed
towards him.
● He worked as a reporter for his local
newspaper

3. ● One day, a student in his class refused to
exchange greeting cards with him because he
was black, it was on this day that he began
to perceive racism.
● In his own words, he felt that he was both an
American and an African, but never an
African-American, with his own distinct,
coherent identity in the American world. “One
ever feels his two-ness,” he explains (Souls,
2).
● However, this event did not discourage him,
in fact it was what influenced him to make
fighting against racism and creating a
identity for African-Americans in America his
life goal.
Epiphany

4. Major
Contributions

5. ● W.E.B. Du Bois was the first black man to ever get a PhD from Harvard.
● He openly opposed the views of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass,
two esteemed and well known individuals, to bring in his own point a view.
● He wrote an essay in Atlantic Monthly which conveyed how he believed that
Black Americans should embrace their African heritage even as they worked
and lived in the United States
● Du Bois published his seminal work The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of
essays which he described the predicament of “double consciousness”, a
concept widely used now.
● He brought attention to the lynching happening in the country, pushing to
make it illegal by editing The Crisis, a NAACP organization newsapper

6. Legacy

7. ● Founded the Niagara Movement, which was a
movement of African-American intellectuals
who called for civil and political rights
for African-Americans and combated racism.
● The NAACP still exists today and it
continues to fight against prejudice
and for minority rights.
● Without Du Bois, equality and rights for
African-Americans and other minorities would
likely not be as advanced as it is today.

8. The Souls of Black Folk
John Brown
Darkwater: Voices From Within The Veil
Dusk of Dawn
Books written by W.E.B. Du Bois