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W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

Historian

W. E. B. Du Bois was an influential American historian, sociologist, civil rights activist, and writer. Born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois is renowned for his advocacy for the rights of African Americans. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. His seminal work, 'The Souls of Black Folk,' remains a foundational text in African American literature and thought.

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Famous W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

“Among Negroes of my generation there was not only little direct acquaintance or consciously inherited knowledge of Africa, but much distaste and recoil because of what the white world taught them about the Dark Continent. There arose resentment that a group like ours, born and bred in the United States for centuries, should be regarded as Africans at all. They were, as most of them began gradually to assert, Americans. My father's father was particularly bitter about this. He would not accept an invitation to a 'Negro' picnic. He would not segregate himself in any way.”

“The most ordinary Negro is a distinct gentleman, but it takes extraordinary training and opportunity to make the average white man anything but a hog.”

Men Opportunity White Training Ordinary Extraordinary Average Gentleman White Man Hog

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.”

White Knowledge One Thing Honesty Ignorance Racism South African American Merit Black People Efficiency Dishonesty Incompetence

Book:The Negro

Source: The Negro

“I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false.”

Thinking Believe Humans I Believe White Unwise

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.”

Men Believe I Believe Black White Brother Brown

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“...in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.”

Source: The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois

“This the American black man knows: his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins. If he wins it will be by no subterfuge or evasion of amalgamation . He will enter modern civilization here in America as a black man on terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination root and branch, or absolute equality. There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the west.”

“Unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people in America, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country.”

Source: The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays

“It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.”

Humans Long Real Soul Girl Black White Boys Study Breaths Breathe Greek Human Soul Boy And Girl Black Or White

Book:W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings

Source: W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings

“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”

“I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.”

Men Believe Soul Form Opportunity I Believe Black White Possibility Particular Brother Development Essentials Infinite Features Brown Rough Times

Book:Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

Source: Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

“We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.”

Soul White Tyranny Oppression Secure Emancipation Oppressors

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.”

Black White Poor Rich Protection Voting Deliberate Theft Robbery

Book:W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings

Source: W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings