“The South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know.....Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.” -- Historian, sociologist and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois (2/28/1868 - 8/27/1963), in his landmark work "The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches," 1903. Du Bois was an early leader of the Niagara Movement, which pushed for an end to Jim Crow laws and for full citizenship rights for African Americans. A founder of the NAACP, Du Bois was doubtful that capitalism could deliver economic equality for African Americans and other people of color, and espoused socialist views later in life.
His death in 1963 just one day before the historic March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was noted by march speaker Roy Wilkins, then head of the NAACP, who asked for a moment of silence in his memory.
