Mary White Ovington & W.E.B. DuBois

In 1909, W.E.B. DuBois, a leading spokesman in the campaign for racial equality, joined Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey, William English Walling, John Milholland, Oswald Garrison Villard, Frances Blascoer and 54 other prominent Americans as founding officers of the NAACP. Both Ovington and DuBois served in crucial roles at the NAACP for decades, helping guide its policies and programs.

"I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying in time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development."

— W.E.B. Du Bois

Mary White Ovington
Born: April 11, 1865 Brooklyn, New York
Died: July 15, 1951 Newton Highlands, Massachusetts

W.E.B. DuBois
Born: February 23, 1868 Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Died: August 27, 1963 Accra, Ghana

Mary White Ovington and William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois were the two principal founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Ovington was one of the people that issued "the call" - the written invitation to civil rights activists of the time - to form the organization that would become so important in the fight against racial injustice in America. She remained as a Board member until 1947. Du Bois was among the most influential Black leaders of the 20th century. In 1905, he had helped form the "Niagara Movement" as a vehicle through which he could agitate for an end to segregation, discrimination and the denial of voting and civil rights. He was among those who responded to Ovington's "call" and he merged his nascent group into the NAACP. He joined the organization in 1910, became the editor for its magazine "Crisis" and edited it until 1934.

In the years following the Civil War, freedom and additional civil rights were given to large numbers of African-Americans. The U.S. Constitution was amended requiring states to provide equal protection without regard to race, and prohibited states from denying anyone the vote because of race. But groups such as the Ku Klux Klan used violence to terrorize Black people from voting or asserting their other constitutional rights. Lynch mobs killed hundreds of Black people in those years. Jim-Crow Laws passed in the south during the 1890s and early 1900s required Black people to stay out of public places that served Whites. Separate restaurants, hotels, railroad cars, toilets, drinking fountains, etc. began to appear. Laws were passed in the South requiring voters to take confusing tests to qualify to vote, consequently excluding uneducated Whites.

It was against this backdrop that the NAACP was formed and since its formation, it has moved from speaking out against lynchings to speaking out against racial profiling and it has often used boycotts and litigation as its primary source of resistance. It has fought legal battles such as Guinn v. the United States (a fight against Oklahoma's grandfather clause-a tactic used to disenfranchise African American's right to vote) and Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the court case that ended racial segregation in schools.

Mary White Ovington was born April 11, 1865. With her parents being part of the anti-slavery movement and supporters of the women's movement, Ovington was no stranger to defending the rights of others. She attended Packer Collegiate Institute before attending Harvard Annex (later known as Radcliffe College) for two years. In 1890 she joined the civil rights movement after hearing Frederick Douglas speak at a Philadelphia church. Disenchanted with the options a woman had in that time of marriage or living with her parents, Mary Ovington took a job heading the Greenpoint Settlement, a community in Brooklyn designed to accommodate the poor, often immigrants. Previously able to spend vacations in Europe, Mary Ovington crossed the class line and moved from a privileged white woman to an advocate for the poor. In 1903 she resigned from that position with the idea to create an interracial settlement house.

In 1904, she was appointed fellow of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations. In that capacity, it was her responsibility to study employment and housing problems in black Manhattan. She later published a book on her findings entitled Half a Man (1911). During this time, she also traveled to the south and worked with both WEB Dubois and Booker T. Washington - the two most prominent African American leaders of the time, representing opposing points of view. By 1906, Ovington, along with John Milholland, had formed the Constitution League, one of several precursors to the NAACP, which focused on the 13th and 14th amendments as grounds for racial justice in America. At the same time, WEB Du Bois had established the Niagara Movement, another group formed to fight racial injustice in the United States.

She joined the Social Reform Party, a controversial political party based on the theory of Karl Marx arguing for a classless society based on collective ownership and control of the industries and social services. At first drawn to the club for its social aspects, she then began to study the tenets of the philosophy. It was a SRC event that opened her eyes to the relationship between class and race.

In 1908, she read an article entitled Race War in the North by William English Walling. He ended the article with "Who realizes the seriousness of the situation, and what large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to [the Negro's] aid?" (105). Seeing this as a call to action, Ovington wrote to Mr. Walling immediately after reading the article. Once he finally responded, Ovington, Mr. Walling along with Henry Moskowitz, drafted "the call". Being the only one of the three to have connections with African Americans, Ovington made the group interracial by inviting them to the meeting scheduled for February 1909 in the apartment of William English Walling, on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Attendees such as Socialists Leonora O'Reilly, activists Mary Church Terrell, and Reverend Francis Grimke met to protest the recent frightening riot in Springfield, Illinois, and the many decades of such oppressive acts of terror as burnings and lynchings. Out of that meeting formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The organization, which still exists almost 100 years later, was designed to fight for racial justice in America.

The inception of the organization did not come without conflict. She was the only woman in the committee formed to build the organization with an active role. Trying to get movers and shakers in the civil rights movement to agree on methods wasn't always easy. Ovington often served as the mediator and ego-soother. She even had to step in as executive secretary for a year when the hired secretary had a falling out with Du Bois and Oswald Garrison Villard.

In 1911, she attended the Universal Races Congress in London, a meeting meant to improve race relations around the world. The NAACP sent Ovington, Du Bois and Dr. W.A. Sinclair. The congress was one of many stops in Ovington's effort to provide an international context to race relations.

In 1916, she became Chairman of the Board where she stayed until 1932, when she took on the job of treasurer. In her involvement in the organization, Ovington served on the advisory committee of the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society and worked closely with Moorfield Storey, Oswald Garrison Villard, W. E. B. DuBois, and James Weldon Johnson. She fought for the rights of women within the NAACP and without. Ovington remained active in the struggle for women's suffrage and as a pacifist opposed America's involvement in the First World War.

Ovington wrote several books and articles including a study of black Manhattan, Status of the Negro in the United States (1913), Socialism and the Feminist Movement (1914), an anthology for black children, The Upward Path (1919), biographical sketches of prominent African Americans, Portraits in Color (1927), an autobiography, Reminiscences (1932) and a history of the NAACP, The Walls Come Tumbling Down (1947).

Ovington retired as a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1947 and in doing so, ended decades of service with the organization. She died in 1951.

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois was one of the most influential Black leaders of the twentieth century whose campaign against racial segregation and oppression laid the foundation for future leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King to follow his footsteps in the struggle for human rights and peace. A spirited intellectual, sociologist, scholar and social activist, he was born five years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery. Residing in a small northern village with few Black families, indications of racism were rarely overt. Although his friends and classmates were mainly White he never experienced the severe alienation or poor treatment because of his race. At an early age, he exhibited a natural intellectual gift, surpassing his classmates in his studies and other pursuits. Young Du Bois eagerly accepted the attention given by teachers who were extremely pleased with his work.

He was valedictorian of his high school graduating class and went on to attend Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught in a rural school during the summer and his interactions with the poor and illiterate led him on a journey to discover his Black identity. Never before had he encountered such overwhelming poverty. Unlike Massachusetts, Nashville was a southern town that exposed him to the bigotry of everyday life he had escaped growing up. He graduated from Fisk in 1888 and entered Harvard University as a junior, receiving a second BA degree. Graduating cum laude in 1890, Du Bois was one of six commencement speakers attracting national attention. In 1892, he was awarded a Slater Fund Fellowship for graduate studies at the University of Berlin. He spent two years in Berlin and traveled considerably in Europe. Returning to Harvard, he obtained a M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. His doctoral thesis, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, is the first volume in Harvard's Historical Series and remains the authoritative work on that subject. Du Bois was the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard in 1896. Although he felt it important to make it clear that he attended Harvard as a Negro and member of a segregated caste system, he was determined to work from within that system to find his way out. He recognized that Harvard teachers were not necessarily better teachers, but better known, with access to wider facilities for gaining knowledge and a broader atmosphere for approaching truth.

By the end of the 19th century, large numbers of African-Americans, in search of a better life, moved to northern cities, particularly Philadelphia and Kansas City. Philadelphia's immigrant population became the focus of Du Bois' study at the University of Pennsylvania. He believed the race problem was one of ignorance and was determined to unearth as much knowledge as he could, thereby providing the "cure" for color prejudice. His relentless studies led to historical investigation, statistical and anthropological measurement, and sociological interpretation. The outcome of this exhaustive endeavor was published, in 1899, as The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, the first serious sociological study of the emerging Black urban population. This was the first time such a scientific approach to studying social phenomena was undertaken. As a result of his research, Du Bois is acknowledged as the father of Social Science.

During the mid and late 1890's, an ideological controversy grew between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, which later grew into a bitter personal battle. At the time, Washington was the most powerful Black man in America. Grants, job placements, or endeavors concerning Blacks were sent to him for endorsement or rejection by influential Whites. Washington's philosophy was to seek some kind of accommodation within the limited opportunities Whites were offering. In 1895, Booker T. Washington gave a speech, the "Atlanta Compromise," that spelled out this approach. He believed Black people should set aside their goals for social and political equality and concentrate on economic advancement, urging African-Americans to acquire industrial skills, such as carpentry and masonry. Once these skills were acquired, Washington believed, Whites would give them the opportunities they deserved. Du Bois vigorously disagreed.

In 1905, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, Du Bois met with Black critics of Booker T. Washington. Consequently, the "Niagara Movement" was created with a mission to agitate an end to all segregation, discrimination and denial of voting and civil rights. Washington, however, used his influence to undermine their efforts and the Niagara Movement failed to get a significant following. But in 1909, Du Bois was invited to attend a National Negro Conference held by White philanthropists and progressives to address the increase in violence against and segregation of African-Americans. The group was also sympathetic to the idea of challenging Washington's leadership. Du Bois agreed to merge the remnants of his Niagara Movement and joined the interracial organization that emerged from this meeting to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1910, he left Atlanta University to become director of publicity and research. His organizational skills, oratory, research, and numerous writings, laid the infrastructure for the successes of the NAACP's fight for human rights. He developed a magazine for the organization titled, "Crisis", that he edited until 1934. The NAACP grew to 50 branch offices and over six thousand members by 1914. More than 100,000 people read his editorials by the end of the decade. This position allowed him to critique all aspects of discrimination and to demand that White America accept Black people on equal terms. Du Bois had crossed the boundaries that were before him and had made vital connections.

He believed that his work for equality went beyond the needs of Black people in the United States. Most of Africa was a European colony by the 20th century and as early as 1900, he was participating in meetings of Africans and African-Americans. While investigating the treatment of Black soldiers in France fighting in World War I, Du Bois helped organize the first meeting of the Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919. Throughout his life, he linked the strivings of Black people in America to those in Africa, and in doing so, he helped inspire Africans to demand full independence from their European colonizers.

His sense of a common identity among all African people grew out of his beliefs on race. Du Bois urged Black people to take pride in their heritage. He also recognized that to be both Black and an American was to have a kind of dual experience. He claimed that "One ever feels his two-ness, --an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body." Consequently, he developed a theory that emphasized race as a distinct quality. Most scientists at that time believed race was a concept that defined important qualities in individuals and that certain behaviors and values were inherent attributes of members of certain races. Du Bois, did not challenge these beliefs, and believed that Black people possessed a certain genius. Also, he believed that Africans and their descendants were a spiritual people in the midst of materialistic America. Thus, Du Bois came to believe that Black people should support Black businesses, churches, schools and newspapers and become a self-segregated community. This notion proved to be the issue that led the NAACP, which had persistently fought segregation, to censure Du Bois. He promptly resigned in May, 1934.

For the next decade, he served as professor and chairman of the sociology department at Atlanta University. He wrote extensively during this period, publishing a major work on the history of the Reconstruction period. This study reflected his growing intellectual debt to Marxism. The central issue of the era concerned the control of labor. The Southern Black "proletariat" essentially staged a "general strike" against the master class creating the institutions of democracy. Although white historians largely ignored his work when it was first written most major historians working in the field today accept many of his ideas.

In addition, he took an extensive world tour and founded a journal, Phylon, which examined issues of race. Du Bois grew closer to the Communist Party during his years after leaving the NAACP. His primary attraction was that socialism appealed to universal "brotherhood" beyond the veil of color. He believed that society would naturally evolve into a more cooperative manner of organization. Initially he was critical of the newly formed Soviet Union but grew more supportive and visited it in 1926. A great fear of communism swept across the United States following World War I. Although he did not join the Communist Party until 1961, many believed he was already a member because of his criticisms of American policy and his praises for Soviet achievements. He denounced the "Cold War" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and became chairman for the Peace Information Center. Running for the U.S. Senate in 1950 as the candidate for the American Labor Party, he received over 200,000 votes. But the government continued its attacks on him and his organization assuming that only a Soviet agent would advocate for peace.

In 1951, Du Bois and other officers of his organization won an acquittal from a federal grand jury indictment charge of "failure to register as agent of a foreign principal." Although he was not convicted of a crime, the government took away his passport and prohibited him from leaving the country between 1952 and 1958. With his passport restored in 1958, Du Bois took another world tour visiting the Soviet Union, China, and several western European countries.

In 1961, Du Bois accepted an invitation from the President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, to live in Ghana. Nkrumah, a long-time comrade from the Pan-African movement, welcomed his longtime friend and co-worker. Du Bois accepted the invitation in order to work on what he hoped would be a ten-volume Encyclopedia Africana. But at the age of ninety-five after gaining his citizenship, he died on August 27, 1963. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech was given the following day at the great march on Washington before a crowd of 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. Although many other speakers beckoned the crowd for endless protests demanding government action to protect the rights of Black people, the legacy Du Bois had left was not forgotten. Roy Wilkins, NAACP Executive Director, announced that Du Bois had died the previous day. He asked the crowd to remember that "Du Bois was the voice that was calling you to gather here today in this cause."

Together with a number of other concerned citizens, Du Bois and Ovington initiated the motion for the civil rights movement that would take place over the next century. Their dedication to improving the lives of African Americans in the United States made possible many of the advances that would take place in the decades to come.


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