Du Bois and His Rivals

328 Pages·2002·1.63 MB·English

by  Raymond Wolters

Du Bois
and His Rivals

Du Bois
and His Rivals
Raymond Wolters
University of Missouri Press Columbia and London
Copyright © 2002 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 06 05 04 03 02
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolters, Raymond, 1938–
Du Bois and his rivals / Raymond Wolters.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8262-1385-5 (alk. paper)
1. Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963.
2. Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963—
Friends and associates. 3. Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward
Burghardt), 1868–1963—Political and social views. 4. African
American civil rights workers—Biography. 5. Civil rights workers—
United States—Biography. 6. African American intellectuals—
Biography. 7. African American leadership—History—20th century.
8. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century.
9. African Americans—Intellectual life—20th century. 10. Plural-
ism (Social sciences)—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
E185.97.D73 2002
305.896(cid:2)073(cid:2)0092—dc21
[B]
2002017951
(cid:2)(cid:2)™ This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Text design: Elizabeth K. Young
Jacket design: Jennifer Cropp
Typesetter: The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc.
Printer and binder: The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
Typefaces: Diotima Roman and Berkeley Book
In Memory of My Mother and Father
and of
Five Capuchin Priests and Teachers at
St.Francis High School
LaCanada-Flintridge,California
●
Fr.Paul Barrett
Fr.Lawrence Caruso
Fr.Cyril Kelleher
Fr.Emilian Meade
Fr.Alphonsus O’Connor

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
One
Du Bois 5
Two
Du Bois and Booker T.Washington 40
Three
Du Bois and the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People 77
Four
Du Bois and the First World War 108
Five
Du Bois and Marcus Garvey 143
Six
Du Bois and Walter White 192
Seven
The Final Years 240
Notes 255
Index 305
vii

Preface
This book was in preparation for a long time. When I was an under-
graduate student, I was very much taken by Richard Hofstadter’s col-
lection of biographies, The American Political Tradition.1 Ever since
then I have wanted to write a collective biography. When I started my
doctoral dissertation, I had it in mind to write about several south-
ern demagogues of the 1930s. Yet I could not figure out how to com-
bine the pace and scope of a group portrait with the quantity of new
information that is expected of a dissertation. I was afraid that my
project would not pass muster as an original contribution to knowl-
edge. So I turned to a different topic and later to another book.2
In the 1970s I began to work on Du Bois and His Rivals. At the
time the papers of W. E. B. Du Bois were owned by Du Bois’s widow,
Shirley Graham Du Bois, but were in the custody of the historian Her-
bert Aptheker. The papers were actually lodged in the basement of
Dr. Aptheker’s house in Brooklyn, but he periodically brought a brief-
case full of Du Bois’s letters for me to read in the Manhattan office of
the American Institute for Marxist Studies. I appreciate Dr. Apthek-
er’s getting me started on this project, although he will doubtless dis-
agree with my departure from the usual depiction of Du Bois as a
radical par excellence. He may even think it perverse for me to have
portrayed our hero as a man who in at least some respects was a con-
servative: a man who believed in the conservation of races and who
held traditional middle-class values with respect to art, the family, and
sexual morality; a man who opposed Communism during most of his
adult life and succumbed only when he was elderly, rejected by his
former allies, and embraced by a new left-wing support network.
After reading several briefcases of documents, I knew that I
should consult the entire collection of Du Bois’s papers. At that point,
however, the University of Massachusetts purchased the collection.
The papers were then closed to scholars, to allow time for treatment
with preserving chemicals and for microfilming. I was told that that
would take a year or two, during which I traveled the country and
did research in the manuscript collections of Du Bois’s friends and ri-
vals. I am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies for
ix