would preserve and expand the store of knowledge about Black people. Encyclopedia of the Negro: Preparatory Volume appeared in 1945. Du Bois's twilight years in Ghana where devoted mainly to this task. Du Bois placed his stress on culture and liberty, urging higher education, and full political and civil rights for all. He had become interested in the problems of Africa as well as Afro-Americans. Du Bois wanted Black Africa independent from colonial rule and united within. In 1961 he accepted the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah to take up residence in Ghana, the first ex-colonial Black African nation. Du Bois had lived to see his Pan-African dream becoming reality. During his student days in Germany, Du Bois took his first tentative steps toward the political left. He joined the Socialist Party in 1910, resigning, however, in 1912. In the 1920's he began reading Marx carefully, and during the 1930's he considered himself a Marxist Socialist, though he criticized the Communist Party for its ineptitude in dealing with Black problems. Du Bois was indicted by the department of Justice early in 1951 for "failure to register as agent of a foreign principal" concerning his work as chairman of the Peace Information Center. The charge was absurd and Du Bois was acquitted, but not before he had suffered deep humiliation from this example of Cold War political persecution. During 1958 and 1959 he spent most of his time in the Soviet Union and China, and in 1961, at the age of ninety-three, he joined the Communist Party of the United States. W. E. B. Du Bois, a Ghanian citizen, died on the evening of August 27, 1963. The legacy of Du Bois as a writer, thinker, and racial leader may well prove to be more durable than that of any other Afro-American of the twentieth century. Booker Taliaferro Washington was born a slave on April 5, 1956, in Franklin County, Virginia. His mother, Jane Burroughs, was a plantation cook, and his fathe...
