When Du Bois left for Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee he encountered, for the first time, the post-Reconstruction South. "I came to a region," he wrote, "where the world was split into white and black halves, and where the darker half was held back by race prejudice and legal bonds as well as by deep ignorance and dire poverty. But facing this was not a lost group, but at Fisk a microcosm of a world and a civilization in potentiality. Into this world I leapt with enthusiasm. A new loyalty and allegiance replaced my Americanism: hence-forward I was a Negro."

At Fisk, Du Bois became determined to make what he called "a scientific conquest of my environment, which would render the emancipation of the Negro race easier and quicker." He resolved to continue his studies at Harvard and was accepted there with a scholarship of $300.