E. B. Du Bois and Booker T Washington had very different views about their culture and country. Du Bois, being born in the North and studying in Europe, was fascinated with the idea of Socialism and Communism. Booker T Washington, on the other hand, was born in the South, and like so many others, had a Black mother and a White father. Thus being born half-white, his views and ideas were sometimes not in the best interest of his people. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois had a poor but relatively happy New England childhood. While still in high school he began his long writing career by serving as a correspondent for newspapers in New York and in Springfield, Massachusetts. After his high school graduation he enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. There he "discovered his Blackness" and made a lifelong commitment to his people. He taught in rural Black schools in Tennessee during summer vacations, thus expanding his awareness of his Black culture. Du Bois graduated from Fisk in 1888, and entered Harvard as a junior. During college he preferred the company of Black students and Black Bostonians. He graduated from Harvard in 1890. Yet he felt that he needed further preparation and study in order to be able to apply "philosophy to an historical interpretation of race relations." He decided to spend another two years at the University of Berlin on a Slater Fund Fellowship. W. E. B. Du Bois traveling widely in Europe, was delighted by the absence of color consciousness and impressed by their mellow civilization. Still, he knew that his life's work was at home, and returned to America in 1894. His work as an editor of The Crisis, the organ of the NAACP, from 1910 to 1934 was perhaps the most sustained and uncompromising single effort in the history of racial protests in America. As early as 1909 he had projected an "Encyclopedia Africana" that...
