Black Civil Rights LeadersGetting Past the Colour LineW.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, the NAACP and Civil Rights

During the first half of the 20th Century civil rights for Blacks in America was a contentious issue. If not for the deeds of Black civil rights leaders W.E.B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey and the efforts of the NAACP, who knows how bad the relationship between different races would be and as Du Bois prophetically stated the main problem would be of the “colour line”.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is one of the greatest black civil rights leaders of all time. He was the first African American to achieve a PhD at Harvard University. He took it upon himself to study the black man and solve the race problem which he described as “the friction between different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in ideals of two different races…” (The Conservation of Races, 1897).
Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, a town that had about 25 black people in Massachusetts. From an earlier age he was taught songs of ancient tradition and learnt t...