William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868.

W.E.B. Du Bois was a champion of oppressed peoples, first at home in the United States and later as part of the Pan-African movement that raised the consciousness of the international community about the plight of third world countries. Du Bois was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and is best known for his novel, The Souls of Black Folk. In 1961, he left America to become a citizen of Ghana. 

ReadWriteThink 
For ideas on how to address multicultural literature with elementary students, see the ReadWriteThink lesson Flying to Freedom: Tar Beach and The People Could Fly (3-5). 

Learn to use picture books to address social issues in the ReadWriteThink lesson Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues (6-8). 

EDSITEment 
EDSITEment's lesson More Amazing Americans: A WebQuest (3-5) guides students through a WebQuest to identify and nominate people for the Meet Amazing Americans section of the Library of Congress' America's Library Web site. Students first spend time familiarizing themselves with the famous people, including W.E.B. Du Bois, profiled on the site.

Smithsonian's History Explorer
From Portraits of a City: The Scurlock Photographic Studio's Legacy in Washington, DC (5-12), view the photograph of W.E.B. DuBois taken at the Scurlock Studios, well known for its images of famous African Americans in the early 20th century and its documentation of African American life.