^ Du Bois is the guy to the right of who is obviously MLK Jr.This is Danielley Hernandez, if you weren't observant enough to get that from the title. So I'm pretty much exhausted and I was really ticked off when I realized that I hadn't done my blog and had no idea what exactly I was writing about. Choosing something I'd never heard and trying to learn something was a very poor choice the week I have mono and one by one the members of the household fall victim to some sort of stomach flu. I feel like poopy, and chances are with the sheer effort and lack of preparation for this blog, it too, will come out like poopy! Then we can be friends. Cuz you know, we'll be the same. But I'll still hate it. Because frankly I wanna be in bed right now. So I guess we won't be friends. But it's worth a shot. Cuz friends are cool. So anyway...
This guy, who I'd never heard of before, is William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. His last name is French, and those it's technically pronounced like deh-bwa he himself pronounced it like doo-boyce. Smooooooth.... He wrote like, a ton of books. I no longer have time to read books. Perhaps that's why I've never heard of him. Hmmm... Most white publishers and big wigs believed that African American men didn't know squat about society and therefore shouldn't write books. They rejected most of his novels. However, he was a Harvard graduate. I'm pretty sure he knew a lot about a lot of stuff, thank you very much. He theorized that the reason there was such an increase in African American crime in the late 19th - early 20th century was because being free came with a lot of social problems that a lot of his brethren just frankly weren't ready for.
In 1909 he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. He fought for the rights of the black people such as suffrage, desegregation, and against the monopoly of the majority against the minority. He encouraged his fellow people to seek higher education and pursue careers in the liberal arts.Some interested things I found out was that Du Bois visited Imperial Japan, China, and Nazi Germany in 1936. In Nazi Germany, the people there showed him more respect than the people in America. Creepeh.
One quote this man is famous for is that people “must learn that among human races and groups, as among vegetables, quality and not mere quantity really counts.” Basically what he's trying to say is that just because there are more people in one particular group (be it race or creed) it doesn't make them better than the smaller group. Especially if the larger group is composed primarily of 'bad apples'. Apples, vegetables ; tomato, tomato...After years of being accused of being socialist/communist/anti-Christ, Du Bois joined Communist Party USA in 1961. Not exactly the brightest move, considering being Communist was similar to being a witch in Salem. Bad News Bears is basically what I'm trying to say.W.E.B. died at the age of ninety-five, in Ghana. Which is in Africa. He was killed in a tragic stampede of water-buffaloes in heat. If you are still falling for that lame joke from AFTHOTWTTF, you need to seek help. He was just really old. And sick. Much like myself, only I like to think of myself as a teenager. Possibly because I am.So there you have it, the man that was considered THE most important African American activist for half a century. And for once, while researching a man for history, he didn't cheat on his wife! Bravo, sir. For breaking down one more stereotype.
Comments
j/k