Du Bois served as editor of *The Crisis* until 1934, when he resigned following a rift with NAACP leadership over his controversial stance on segregation. Under Du Bois's guidance, the journal attracted a wide readership, reaching 100,000 in 1920, and drew many new supporters to the NAACP.

In a February 1911 editorial, for example, Du Bois stressed the universal threat that discrimination represented, stating that "if you can separate people by ..." There is a strong case to be made for regarding W.E.B. Du Bois as the most influential African American intellectual of the first half of the twentieth century. It was in the effort to combat such practices that Du Bois and other allies decided in 1906 to found a national organization devoted to the cause of African American civil rights, the Niagara Movement. While short lived, the effort served as a precedent for the eventual establishment of a larger and more successful venture in 1909: the NAACP. Du Bois was also to be a founding member of this organization and was to take on the positions of Director of Publicity and Research and editor of the organization’s official organ, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races.

As the twentieth century began, W. E. B. Du Bois and other activists seeking more radical social change came together to form the Niagara Movement, setting the stage for the later NAACP and a truly national struggle for civil rights. Through his work as editor, Du Bois highlighted and printed stories of lynchings and brutalities committed against Blacks that were ignored entirely by the mainstream white or Black presses.

With the publication of *Souls of Black Folk*, Du Bois emerged as the most prominent spokesperson for the opposition to Booker T. Washington's policy of political conservatism and racial accommodation. After the collapse of efforts to compromise their differences through a series of meetings in 1904, Du Bois joined William Monroe Trotter and other Washington opponents to form the Niagara Movement, an organization militantly advocating full civil and political rights for African Americans. Although its officers made some initial efforts to maintain a détente with Booker T. Washington, the NAACP represented a clear opposition to his policy of accommodation and political quietism. It launched legal suits, legislative lobbying, and propaganda campaigns that embodied uncompromising, militant attacks on lynching, Jim Crow, and disfranchisement. In its monthly issues he rallied black support for NAACP policies and programs and excoriated white opposition to equal rights.

Du Bois became a leading advocate for civil rights and Pan-African unity among Africans and African descendants elsewhere in the world. In 1909 Du Bois and other African American leaders joined with white proponents of racial equality to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which became the country’s most enduring civil rights organization. Under the leadership of Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Thurgood Marshall, and others, the NAACP publicized racial injustices and initiated lawsuits to secure equal treatment for Black Americans in education, employment, housing, and public accommodations.

DuBois had long been committed to social reform by means of social science. But he now became more directly engaged in advocacy and political action, especially in response to the rising tide of southern racial violence. He helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, and in 1910 he left Atlanta to become an officer of the NAACP, its only Black board member, and the editor of its monthly magazine, the Crisis. DuBois served as editor of the Crisis for 24 years, taking on such issues as legal and political rights, discrimination and race relations, African American cultural and intellectual advancement, and Pan-Africanism.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century, was an editor, historian, sociologist, novelist, civil rights leader, socialist, and pan-Africanist. Du Bois's experience in the South caused him to reject the accommodationist methods of Booker T. Washington, and to press for public protest against racial violence and discrimination. He advocated the development of an intellectual elite, which he called the "talented tenth," of African Americans to provide leadership for the race, and argued for an aggressive strategy toward black integration into American political and economic life. In 1905 he helped to found the Niagara Movement, and in 1910, its successor, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Du Bois became director of publicity and research for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909. In *The Souls of Black Folk* (1903), he argued for "manly" and "ceaseless agitation and insistent demand for equality." Du Bois rejected accommodation as the best response to the stark racial segregation which enveloped America.

W.E.B. Du Bois was a scholar, activist, and co-founder of the NAACP who advanced a bold vision for civil rights. He argued for higher education, political participation, and direct challenges to inequality. This is evidence of his intellectual leadership and lasting influence.

Du Bois emerged as the most outspoken critic of Booker T. Washington's advocacy of accommodation to segregation. He co-founded the Niagara Movement and then the NAACP to agitate for full equality between blacks and whites. Born three years after the end of the Civil War, Du Bois witnessed the imposition of Jim Crow, its defeat by the Civil Rights Movement and the triumph of African independence struggles.

W.E.B. Du Bois was a sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Through his research, writing, and advocacy, he helped shape the modern civil rights movement and inspired generations to continue the struggle for equality. Du Bois rejected the idea that Black Americans should accept segregation.

#OTD civil rights activist, writer and scholar W.E.B. DuBois was born. In the decades following the end of slavery, he tirelessly documented and fought against racial inequality. Du Bois challenged the idea that Black people should accept second-class status and wait for equality. Instead, he pushed for immediate change, and as one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909, Du Bois’s work continues to inspire generations.

Du Bois became the editor of *The Crisis*, the NAACP’s influential magazine, where he championed civil rights, and his editorials and writings helped shape the direction of the civil rights movement. He was a vocal critic of lynching, segregation, and discrimination, and his work with the NAACP established him as a formidable force in the fight for equality. Du Bois was a key figure in the founding of the Niagara Movement in 1905, which was a direct challenge to Washington’s philosophy of gradualism and compromise. The movement ... called for immediate civil rights, including suffrage, equality before the law, and an end to racial discrimination. This radical stance positioned Du Bois as a leader of a new generation of Black intellectuals and activists who were unwilling to wait for incremental change. The Niagara Movement eventually led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1909.

*W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause* explores the life and legacy of notable Black scholar and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois. His commentary on systemic racial discrimination against Black Americans and the concept of “double consciousness” identity made him an influential voice of the Harlem Renaissance and inspired trailblazers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “W.E.B. Du Bois authored 17 books, co-founded the NAACP, and challenged the ideas of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. He even created infographics to depict the color line and explain why Black Americans were being held back.”

Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal *The Crisis*, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois used his position in the NAACP to respond to racist incidents.

Watch a short video biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, the Black scholar and activist who led the Niagara Movement and co-founded the NAACP. The video says Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement opposing Booker T. Washington's racial accommodation theory, and later became editor of the NAACP magazine *The Crisis* to protest lynching and race riots.

In its monthly issues he rallied black support for NAACP policies and programs and excoriated white opposition to equal rights. But he also opened the journal to a wide variety of black perspectives and experiences, publishing work by younger writers and activists who would themselves become influential. Through his role at *The Crisis* and his leadership in the Niagara Movement and NAACP, Du Bois helped to galvanize opposition to segregation and racial violence among African Americans and sympathetic whites, contributing to the emergence of a national civil rights struggle in the early twentieth century.

Du Bois was a scholar, activist, and co-founder of the NAACP who advanced a bold vision for civil rights. He argued for higher education, political participation, and direct challenges to inequality. This page is a social-media post and is not an authoritative historical source.