
On this day in history, August 27, 1963, civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois dies at age 95
Fox News
On this day in history, Aug. 27, 1963, W.E.B. Du Bois — who grew up in Massachusetts and became a prominent sociologist, author, activist and co-founder of the NAACP — died at age 95.
The civil rights pioneer, born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was the son of Mary Silvina Burghardt, a domestic worker, and Alfred Du Bois, a barber and laborer, according to the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Du Bois shared in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited The Crisis, its magazine, from 1910 to 1934. Erica Lamberg is a contributing reporter for Fox News Digital.
Du Bois descended from mixed-race Bahamian slaves. His father enlisted during the Civil War as a private in a New York regiment of the Union army.