UMass Amherst
Du Bois: Activist Life
A new loyalty and allegiance replaced my Americanism: hence-forward I was a Negro.
-- W.E.B. Du Bois
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.

Du Bois at 19 Du Bois at age nineteen

Du Bois with Fisk University faculty and students in front of Jubilee Hall Du Bois with Fisk University faculty and students in front of Jubilee Hall, c. 1887.
title page Close up.

Fisk Class of 1888 Fisk University Class of 1888.

Du Bois teaching certificate During the summers, Du Bois taught school to the children of ex-slaves in rural Tennessee in log cabins built before the Civil War.

Du Bois lecture announcement Announcement for a lecture by Du Bois at Harvard.

Du Bois at Harvard, 1890, or University of Berlin, 1892 Du Bois at Harvard, 1890, or University of Berlin, 1892.

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