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“The Leadership of Du Bois”
by Dr. Manning Marable

It took 100 years for the discipline of sociology finally to recognize the great contributions of African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois; but that acknowledgement, long overdue, has finally taken place. In August in San Francisco, at the 99th annual convention of the American Sociological Association, the opening plenary was dedicated to ''W.E.B. Du Bois: Pre-eminent Public Sociologist of the 20th Century.'' The association's progressive new president, Professor Michael Burawoy of the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to set a new direction for sociology as a field.

For sociology to engage the pressing issues of our time and transcend the boundaries of race, class, and gender, a ''publicly oriented'' scholarship was required. The best personification of these socially relevant values was Du Bois — co-founder of the NAACP, ''father'' of Pan-Africanism, and celebrated author of 19 books, including “The Souls of Black Folk,” “Darkwater,” and “Black Reconstruction.” The opening plenary on Du Bois featured presentations by four prominent African American scholars: Professor Patricia Hill Collins, University of Cincinnati; Professor Gerald Horne, University of Houston; Professor Aldon Morris, Northwestern University; and myself.

Nearly 1,000 scholars and graduate students packed the main ballroom in the San Francisco Hilton to hear the talks. What was truly striking about the event was that it was probably the first time the sociology profession had invited four Black scholars to initiate its annual meeting and to challenge the field itself by highlighting the significant insights and achievements of Du Bois toward a deeper understanding of American society.

W.E.B. Du Bois had the great fortune — or misfortune — to be so incredibly productive over a lifetime of 95 years (he died only hours before the historic 1963 March on Washington, D.C.) that many of those who ''honored'' him deliberately modified or reinterpreted his ideas away from his basic radicalism. The NAACP, for example, proudly kept alive his writings and ideas generated during his nearly quarter-century of struggle against Jim Crow segregation as editor of the group's principal publication, The Crisis, from 1910 until 1934. But the organization rejected and harshly denounced the progressive ideas espoused by Du Bois in his later years, especially during the domestic repression of McCarthyism and the Cold War.

Social scientists in the 1950s commenting on Du Bois' work tended to divide both his scholarship and his political career, relegating the second half of his life to oblivion. This once prompted Du Bois to complain to Fisk University librarian Arna Bontemps that ''my career did not end with Booker T. Washington .... I hope you will not either overstress that earlier part of my career [or] forget that latter part.''

Du Bois was a serious, rigorous scholar who set the highest standards for research. Yet he always knew that African American intellectuals could never afford to take refuge in the social laboratory, removed from the daily struggles of their people. There was no rear guard 100 years ago in the collective effort to stem Black disfranchisement or to halt racial exclusion of Blacks in public accommodations.

''One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved,'' Du Bois observed in his “Autobiography.”

Beginning in the late 1890s, Du Bois penned a  series of provocative essays in popular magazines documenting African American efforts to halt political disfranchisement and defend Black higher education. Drawing heavily upon the earliest ideas of Alexander Crummell, Du Bois began to argue that the then-tiny Black middle class possessed the necessary resources and potential to constitute itself as a leadership group for the entire race. This ''talented 10th'' thesis was clearly outlined during 1903, at the beginning of Du Bois' political conflicts with conservative Black educator Booker T. Washington.

African Americans must be ''trained for social power,'' Du Bois boldly asserted in a widely read essay in Outlook magazine, published in October 1903: If Negroes were to be the central actors in the making of a new racial history, the problem of racism must be analyzed first and foremost from a Black perspective, employing a language and cultural style that resonated with African Americans. White Americans, Du Bois believed, could be observers and occasional participants in this new conversation about race, but they would not dictate the terms of the discussion. His powerful essay ''The Negro Problem from the Negro Point of View: The Parting of the Ways,'' published in April 1904, makes the case for a ''Black worldview,'' and lays the general groundwork for the rest of his intellectual career, which lasted until his death in 1963.

In ''The Negro Ideals of Life,'' written in 1905, Du Bois again suggested that the unique historical experiences and cultural heritage of Black people in America had nurtured a common Black consciousness. That same year,  Du Bois’ radical editor, William Monroe Trotter, and others launched the Niagara movement to challenge the accommondationist program of Booker T. Washington and to campaign for full civil rights, suffrage, and social equality for Negroes.

Throughout the remaining years of his productive life as a ''public intellectual,'' Du Bois was continuously involved in ideological challenges against the forces of racist reaction in a wide variety of popular ways, from his regular newspaper columns in the African American press to his two-year effort with Jessie Fauset in the 1920s to produce a children's magazine, the Brownie's Book.

By honoring Du Bois, American sociologists are finally recognizing that there should be no separation between meaningful social science and social change. Any scholarship that seeks to interpret the world should also attempt to provide real solutions, especially for those who are most oppressed. By recognizing the radical legacy of Du Bois, we show the contining power of ideas to remake the world.