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Founder of the NAACP
W .E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) is regarded as one o f the most profound
scholars o f his time and the ‘dean’ o f Black intellectuals. Scholar, spokesman
and prolific writer, DuBois was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk,
Howard and Berlin Universities and headed the department o f history and
economics at Atlanta University for 13 years. He was one o f the founders o f
the National Association for the Advancement o f Colored People and was
editor o f his Crisis Magazine. In 1919 he launched the Pan-African
Congresses in Paris. He was persecuted by the government for his political
views. When Ghana gained its freedom, he went to that country to help the
new government and to work for Pan-Africanism. He died there in 1963.
Champion of the
Back to Africa Movement
Marcus Garvey played an important role in
focusing Black attention on the homeland—A f
rica.
In 1917 he founded the Universal Negro Im
provement Association in Jamaica, his home.
Its purpose was to “ take Africa, to organize it,
develop it, arm it and make it defender o f
Negros the world over.’’
Membership boomed after Garvey moved to
Harlem in 1916. Preaching that “ Black is beau
tiful” he urged Black people to "combine to re
establish the purity o f their own race___ ’’
Garvey claimed 11 million followers. As an
economic arm o f his organization he founded
the Black Star shipping line. He was convicted
o f mail fraud in selling shares in 1923, was par
doned, and returned to Jamaica.
George Washington Carver
(1864-1943)
Dr. George Washington Carver, one o f America’s leading scientists,
experimented with the peanut, and found more than three hundred products that
could be made from it, including wood dyes, soap, linoleum, plastics, flour, paint,
ink, and many different kinds o f oil.
Dr. Carver worked to improve the economy o f the South through his
experiments, not only with the peanut, but with sweet potatoes, soybeans, and
cotton stalks, as well.
In the state o f New York, January 5 is known as Carver Day.
Many o f Dr. Carver’s personal belongings and scientific papers are housed in
the Carver Museum on the campus o f Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he
served as director o f agricultural research.
In 1896, George Washington Carver joined the faculty as director o f agricultural
research. Today Tuskegee covers nearly 5,000 acres, has more than 150 buildings,
and is internationally known for agricultural research.
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