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W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), one of the most important African American writers, was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was educated at Fisk and Harvard universities. He had little personal experience of the social and political exclusion of the blacks until he went to the south to Fisk in 1885. In the first stages of career, he devoted himself to the scholarly study of the status and conditions of his people in the United States. He taught Economics and History at Atlanta University from 1896-1910 and became famous for his studies of the black people in USA. John Brown (1909), The Negro (1915), The Gift of Black Folk (1924) and Black Resuilection (1935)- His books during the period included - Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America (1896) and Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study went to reach wider audience.
For Du Bois, the social prejudice was a national issue and intensely urgent one. He wanted as many black people as he could be black and aware of it. They included his essays, poems, short stories, plays and sketches, many of which were published in two magazines he edited The Moon and The Horizon. The Souls of the Black Folk uses song, sketch, and story to explore the conditions of the black people. He later studied in University of Berlin (Germany).
Du Bois authored of Mr. Booker. T Washington and Others,” and essay later collected in his landmark book The Souls of Black Folk (1903) - Du Bois carefully demonstrates that despite - his many accomplishments, Washington had, in effect, accepted segregation - that is, the unequal and separate treatment of black Americans and that segregation would inevitably lead to inferiority complex, particularly in the field of education. Du Bois, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), also wrote sensitive appreciations of the African-American traditions and culture. His work helped the black” intellectuals rediscover their rich folk literature and music. In 1949, he became the Director of Peace Information Center in New York and 1961, joined the Communist Party. He had gone to live in Ghana 1961 and became Ghanaian citizen and an editor of Encyclopedia Africana. It the age of 93, he died in 1961.