In November 2020, friends of the Westward. E. B. Du Bois Center shared a series of quotes by Du Bois that resonate in our ain fourth dimension.

The quotes below were chosen by the 2019 cohort of Du Bois Centre graduate and post-doctoral fellows.

Du Bois Center Fellows Favorite Du Bois Quotes

Group portrait of Du Bois and friends and family at his 70th altogether commemoration at Atlanta University, 1938.

"Between me and the other world there is e'er an unasked question: unasked past some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing information technology. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a one-half-hesitant sort of way, center me curiously or compassionately, and and so, instead of proverb directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do non these Southern outrages make your claret boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the humid to a simmer, as the occasion may ask. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word."

W. E. B. Du Boisin The Souls of Black Folk(1903)
Chosen past Jay Cephas, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Northeastern University and 2019 Du Bois Heart Post-Doctoral Young man

"You are non and yet yous are: your thoughts, your deeds, above all your dreams withal live."

W. E. B. Du Bois in The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois(1968)
Chosen past Freeden Blume Oeur, Acquaintance Professor of Folklore and Instruction at Tufts Academy and 2019 Du Bois Heart Post-Doctoral Fellow

"We say easily, for instance, 'The ignorant ought not to vote.' We would say, 'No civilized state should have citizens also ignorant to participate in government,' and this statement is simply a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens likewise ignorant to aid rule information technology."

West. E. B. Du Bois in Of the Ruling of Men (1920)
Chosen by Adam Dahl, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Swain

"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sunday; then moved back once again toward slavery."

W. East. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Alexandria Russell, Mail-Doctoral Young man in the Department of History at Rutgers University and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Swain
Portrait taken by writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten.

"Children learn more from what you are than what you teach."

W. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Victoria I. Rizo Lenshyn, German and Scandinavian Studies, Academy of Massachusetts Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Heart Post-Doctoral Fellow

"Reader of dead words who would live deeds, this is the flowering of my logic: I dream of a world of infinitive and valuable variety; not in the laws of gravity or atomic weights, but in human variety in height and weight, color and peel, hair and nose and lip. Merely more than especially and far in a higher place and beyond this, is a realm of true liberty: in thought and dream, fantasy and imagination; in gift, aptitude, and genius—all possible manner of difference, topped with liberty of soul to do and be, and liberty of thought to give to a earth and build into it, all wealth of inborn individuality. Each endeavor to stop this freedom of being is a blow at democracy—that real republic which is reservoir and opportunity . . . There can be no perfect democracy curtailed past colour, race, or poverty. But with all nosotros accomplish all, even Peace."

W. Eastward. B. Du Bois in The Earth and Africa: An Research into the Role Which Africa Has Played in World History (Oxford Academy Press, 2007 [1947]), 165.
Chosen by Phillip Sinitiere, Professor of History at the College of Biblical Studies, Houston, TX and 2019 Du Bois Heart Mail-Doctoral Fellow

"Perhaps even higher than strength and fine art loom human sympathy and sacrifice as characteristic of Negro womanhood"

W. E. B. Du Bois in The Damnation of Women (1920)
Chosen past Sarah Holm Tanzi, 2019 Du Bois Heart Mail service-Doctoral Fellow

 Viewing anniversary parade from balcony of ancient Royal Palace in Peking, Oct. 1, 1962.

"Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they exercise bang-up and beautiful things. And shall we not all-time guide humanity past telling the truth about all this, then far as the truth is attestable?"

W. E. B. Du Boisin Blackness Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Eliza Araújo, Visiting Scholar at UMass AFROAm Department, Ph.D pupil at Universidade Federal da Paraíba, and 2019 Du Bois Heart Graduate Fellow

"Merely what of Black women?… I most sincerely doubt if whatever other race of women could have brought its fineness upwardly through so devilish a burn."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Venus Dark-green, Doctoral student in Sociology at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Beau

"Beneath the Veil lay right and wrong, vengeance and beloved, and sometimes throwing bated the veil, a soul of sweet Beauty and Truth stood revealed."

Westward. E. B. Du Bois in Blackness Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Aaron Yates, Doctoral student in Sociology at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Eye Graduate Beau

"I believe in pride of race and lineage and self; in pride of cocky and so deep as to contemptuousness injustice to other selves."

W. Eastward. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Samantha Davis, Doctoral student in Political Scientific discipline at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Middle Graduate Swain

Portrait of W. Eastward. B. Du Bois seated in study holding newspaper.

"The true significance of slavery in the United States to the whole social evolution of America lay in the ultimate relation of slaves to democracy. What were to exist the limits of democratic control in the United States? If all labor, blackness likewise as white, became free – were given schools and the right to vote – what control could or should be set up to the power and action of these laborers? Was the rule of the mass of Americans to be unlimited, and the right to dominion extended to all men regardless of race and color, or if not, what power of dictatorship and command; and how would property and privilege be protected? This was the bully and principal question which was in the minds of the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States and connected in the minds of thinkers down through the slavery controversy. It even so remains with the world as the problem of commonwealth expands and touches all races and nations."

Westward. E. B. Du Boisin Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Mike Jirik, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at UMass and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Swain

Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than correct, justice and plain common-sense.

W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction (1935)

"And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, –all men know something of poverty; non that men are wicked, –who is good? not that men are ignorant, –what is Truth? Nay, simply that men know and then trivial of men."

W. Eastward. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Blackness Folk(1903)
Chosen by Stacie Klinowski, Doctoral student in the English Section at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can exist done and not some time to come twenty-four hours or future twelvemonth."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Heather Brinn, Ph.D Candidate in the History Department at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Middle Graduate Fellow

W. E. B. Du Bois in his office belongings the first effect of The Crisis.

"The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the globe's need of that work. With this, life is sky, or as near sky equally y'all can become."

W. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Khaleelah Harris, Primary of Divinity educatee at Yale Divinity School and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Boyfriend

"But one affair is sure and that is the fact that since the fifteenth century these ancestors of mine and their other descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and accept one long retentivity. The actual ties of heritage between the individuals of this group, vary with the ancestors that they have in common and many others: Europeans and Semites, perhaps Mongolians, certainly American Indians. Simply the physical bail is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is its social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; and this heritage binds together non only the children of Africa, but extends through yellow Asia and into the Southward Seas. It is this unity that draws me to Africa."

W. Eastward. B. Du Bois in Dusk of Dawn(1940)
Chosen past Swati Birla, Historical Sociologist at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Crucified on the vast wheel of time, I flew round and round with the Zeitgeist, waving my pen and lifting faint voices to explain, expound and exhort; to see, foresee and prophesy, to the few who could or would mind."

Due west. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Jingjing Zhang, Visiting Scholar in W.East.B Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Beau