The Life and Studies of W.E.B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois entered the world on February 23, 1868. This was less than three years after slavery was outlawed. However, his family had been out of slavery for several generations. He was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a small village with only a handful of black families. His teachers quickly made him a favorite, and most of his playmates were white. At the age of fifteen he became a local correspondent for the New York Globe. Du Bois moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he received a scholarship and attended Fisk University. This was the first time that he discovered that being black was a big part of his identity. He spent his summers in Tennessee teaching in rural schools. It was there that he met "the real seat of slavery." He had never seen such poverty in his entire life. "I touched intimately the lives of the commonest of mankind--people who ranged from barefooted dwellers on dirt floors, with patched rags for clothes, to rough har!

d-working farmers, with plain clean plenty." (Hamilton, Her Stories). Unlike Massachusetts,

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