W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause
Preview: 5/19/2026 | 2m 29sVideo has Closed Captions
Explore the life and legacy of notable Black scholar and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois.
Explore the life and legacy of notable Black scholar and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois. From his birth, just five years after the Emancipation Proclamation; to his death, on the eve of the March on Washington in 1963, his legacy as an activist continues to resonate today.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...
Support provided by:
W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause
Preview: 5/19/2026 | 2m 29sVideo has Closed Captions
Explore the life and legacy of notable Black scholar and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois. From his birth, just five years after the Emancipation Proclamation; to his death, on the eve of the March on Washington in 1963, his legacy as an activist continues to resonate today.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch American Masters
American Masters is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Buy Now
A front row seat to the creative process
How do today’s masters create their art? Each episode an artist reveals how they brought their creative work to life. Hear from artists across disciplines, like actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, singer-songwriter Jewel, author Min Jin Lee, and more on our podcast "American Masters: Creative Spark."Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(gentle music) - I very early got the idea.
- That I was going to prove to the world that Negroes... - Were just like other people.
(upbeat music) - W.E.B.
Du Bois is arguably the greatest Black intellectual scholar activist in American history.
(dramatic music) - [Viola] The first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard.
- He's one of the most educated men in the country.
Not Black men.
- One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved.
- Du Bois understood how important it was for Black people to have control of the narratives that were being written.
- It's a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.
- [Karida] He built organizations and institutions that had not existed before.
- [Speaker 1] He founded "The Crisis" magazine.
- It was the umbilical cord between the Black masses.
- [Viola] His advocacy for women's rights was unusually expansive for a man of his generation.
- The statement that woman is weaker than man is sheer rot.
My main life work was out in the world and not at home.
- Du Bois and our father, Kwame Nkrumah, they were working on changing our colonized minds.
- We know why Italy has been promised Ethiopia's territory by our department of state lynching and disfranchisement go merrily on.
- Du Bois was thought to be an enemy of the United States.
He was arrested, he was handcuffed, he would not compromise his principles.
He dies on the eve of the March on Washington.
- His was the voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause.
(dramatic music)
Support for PBS provided by:
Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...