W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis

Author:David Levering Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

14.

NAACP

The Beginning

“GENTLEMEN,” ATLANTA University’s famous professor of economics and history wrote on July 5, 1910, “having accepted the position of Director of Publicity and Research in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, I hereby place in your hands my resignation.” Expressing regret immediately, President Ware hoped that somehow Du Bois could continue directing the annual studies and that Augustus Dill, Du Bois’s selfless factotum, might remain behind to make that possible. Twenty-seven days later, the trustees accepted the resignation and voted official appreciation for the “great ability and devotion” with which Du Bois had served the university, noting with particular emphasis (and significantly in light of the general impression he gave of aloofness) that the “charm of his personality and his prevailing good cheer have added much to the enjoyment of life in the school family.” Dean Myron Adams, whose family had shared the same floor with the Du Boises from earliest days, wrote that his New York-bound colleague would be much missed.1 Du Bois was leaving in such a hurry, however, that there seems to have been little or no time for ceremonial farewells. Nina and Yolande were staying behind, the trustees’ executive committee having graciously complied with his request that they be allowed to retain their South Hall apartment during the coming academic year. Frankly owning up to the vagaries of the NAACP offer, William English Walling, one of the new associations organizers, had written Du Bois in early June, “if I were an old and intimate friend of yours, I should certainly urge you to take the risk.”2 The risk was just the sort of live option William James would have applauded, a chance to create a new language and chart a new course for racial assertiveness.

The organization Du Bois was leaving Atlanta to serve was still undergoing birth trauma. Since its beginning the year before, as the Conference on the Status of the Negro, the evolving NAACP had tacked between two divergent conceptions of itself: the first, as primarily a white organization dedicated to African-American uplift through well-financed suasion; the second, as an interracial phalanx challenging the mainstream public to accept ever-greater civil and social rights for the nation’s historic minority. Those who wanted Du Bois on board in a commanding role favored the latter course, but Mary Ovington said that most of their energies had gone into “trying to keep the conservatives from capturing us and get[ting] money from the radicals to do a minimum of constructive work.” The widely held perception that what became the NAACP was started by African-Americans is understandable but only symbolically true. For that very reason, Du Bois deliberately inflated the contributions of African-Americans when he chronicled the events of the 1909 National Negro Conference. But Ovington and the millionaire Socialist Walling, rather than Du Bois and Trotter, were the sparks of the association; and Charles Edward Russell and Oswald Villard were the engines.3 Kept away from New York by classes and limited funds, Du Bois was able to exercise no more than a secondary influence during the association’s first months.

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