W.E.B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. He was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era.