Kasim Reed

W. E. B. Du Bois died in Accra, Ghana, on August 27, 1963, at the age of 95. He was buried near the home where he had spent his final years, a place that is now part of the Du Bois Memorial Centre. The timing of his death was striking. The following day, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington, where NAACP leader Roy Wilkins asked the crowd to observe a moment of silence in his honor. Du Bois had spent his life demanding many of the rights that the marchers were fighting for, and less than a year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law, outlawing segregation and discrimination in major areas of American public life. Born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois became one of the most influential Black intellectuals in modern history. He was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard University and went on to teach history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. He helped establish the Niagara Movement, which demanded full civil and political rights for Black Americans, and later became one of the founding figures of the NAACP. Through his writing and editorship of The Crisis, he challenged lynching, segregation, disenfranchisement and discrimination in education and employment. He also disagreed sharply with Booker T. Washington's accommodationist approach, arguing that economic opportunity could not substitute for political rights and equality under the law. Du Bois's work extended far beyond the United States. He was a major figure in Pan-Africanism and connected the struggle against American racism with the fight against European colonialism and imperialism in Africa and elsewhere. His books, including The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America, challenged deeply rooted ideas about race, history and the role of Black people in shaping American society. He also became increasingly critical of capitalism, supported socialist causes, advocated peace and campaigned against nuclear weapons. By the time he died in Ghana, Du Bois had lived through slavery's aftermath, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, two world wars and the emergence of the modern civil rights movement. His life stretched across nearly a century, but his central demand remained remarkably consistent: that Black people should have the political power, education, economic opportunity and freedom necessary to determine their own futures.