W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois better known as W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was a sociologist, philosopher, educator, novelist, activist, historian, critic, and journalist. There are few people who examined what he called the race problem more robustly. He wrote ‘had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order into which I was born. But just that part of this order which seemed to most of my fellows nearest perfection seemed to me most inequitable and wrong; and starting from that critique, I gradually, as the years went by, found other things to question in my environment.’