February 23 is a special day in American, African American, and world history. It is the birthday of W. E. B. Du Bois, perhaps the nation’s greatest intellectual and activist. And in a time of uncertain war, of religious and racial strife, and of national division, his legacy and contributions should be remembered. Born in 1868 in Massachusetts, he died in Ghana on the eve of the March on Washington in 1963. In his almost one hundred years, Du Bois helped transform the nation and inspired millions across the world.
On February 23, 1968, the centennial of Du Bois’s birth and five years after his death, Martin Luther King, Jr., marked the occasion before a packed crowd in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, only weeks before being cut down by an assassin.