William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: A Man of the Renaissance

Commonly referred to as a Renaissance man, W.E.B. Du Bois is revered in the present-day as an intellectual sociologist who contributed much knowledge to the greater understanding of African Americans in the twentieth century. While Dr. Du Bois wanted to be in a leadership position during the movement of a large concentration of high-spirited blacks to Harlem, New York, in search of a liberating surroundings, he was rejected such a role because of his Victorian-style ways that were obsolete to the "New Negro."

Harlem, New York saw a youthful, bustling new era that ushered in thriving black communities which found prosperity in both the pre- and post- World War I atmosphere. Home to more than 100,000 African Americans, Harlem saw a surge in black culture that encompassed a revitalized approach to American literature and redefined the sense of creativity with respect to fine arts (Kennedy et al. 741). It was the 1920 United States’s census that reported more Americans were living in cities than in rural towns which was significant because it was the first time in the young nation’s history that urban areas proved to be more populated than the formerly inhabited bucolic areas. More specifically, previously mechanized cities lured southerners, particularly those of African American descent, to the northeast and midwest sections of the United States. Historians collectively refer to the movement of these peoples to the Industrial north as the Great Migration which embodies the notion that blacks were the new source of labor that fueled the lively metropolises that were once occupied by European immigrants. This mass movement of African Americans to generally specific areas dramatically increased the concentration of this e...

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...uropean, or Asian (Foner 268). While not a significant character in the Harlem Renaissance, his contributions to the human race shall not be overlooked: both The Crisis and The Souls of Black Folk have gone a long way in the education of all men and continue to do so today nearly one hundred years later.

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of great imaginative independence that sought to bring the same prosperity felt by white Americans in the Roaring Twenties to the generally dominated black Americans. While such an era seems to be the perfect situate for a civil rights activist, this proved to be fallacious as Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois relentlessly to submerge himself in the movement so that his ideas could be taken to heart. Unfortunately, they never were and the scholarly Du Bois was forced to find other passages that valued his wisdom.