William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868. Although he was born and raised in Massachusetts, he attended a black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee called Fisk University. After his graduation in 1888, he taught in rural schools over the summer.

               W. E. B. Du Bois went back to school, and became the first African-American to graduate with a Ph. D in history from Harvard in 1895. He studied in Germany while waiting to get his post-doctoral degree, but ran out of funds before he could do so.

​            His published two books. The first one, The Souls of Black Folk, was published not long after he graduated college. His second book, The Philadelphia Negro, ​​​published in 1899, was the first case study of a black community in the United States.

               All of W. E. B. Du Bois' accomplishments got him the title of the "First great black scholar in America."

​            Du Bois died on August 27, 1963.