W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography

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W. E. B. Du Bois, circa 1940s
		During the 1940s Du Bois became increasingly militant both in his opposition to imperialism and to U. S. foreign policy. In 1939, he had returned to Atlanta University to become the founding editor of Phylon, but was forced to resign in 1944, perhaps in part because of the radical views he expressed in the journal's pages. Now in his seventies, instead of retiring Du Bois returned to the staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He proceeded to help organize the Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, in 1945. Although Du Bois was elected the international president of the Congress, it was, in fact, dominated by Africans agitating for independence and particularly by Kwame Nkrumah, the future president Ghana. During this decade, Du Bois published Dusk of Dawn: An Autobiography of a Concept of Race (1940), Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945), and The World and Africa (1947). One year later, in reaction to Du Bois's very vocal militantism, the NAACP dismissed him, one of its founders, from its ranks.
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