dubois, w. e. b.

A black author and teacher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A radical thinker on racial questions, he helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). DuBois criticized the position of Booker T. Washington that blacks should accept their inferior status in American society and “accommodate” to white people. Later in his life, DuBois joined the American Communist party. His best-known book is The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays.