In November 2020, friends of the Westward. East. B. Du Bois Center shared a serial of quotes by Du Bois that resonate in our own time.

The quotes below were chosen past the 2019 cohort of Du Bois Eye graduate and post-doctoral fellows.

Du Bois Eye Fellows Favorite Du Bois Quotes

Group portrait of Du Bois and friends and family unit at his 70th altogether celebration at Atlanta University, 1938.

"Betwixt me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, palpitate round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and so, instead of saying straight, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my boondocks; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages brand your blood eddy? At these I smiling, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may enquire. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word."

Westward. Due east. B. Du Boisin The Souls of Black Folk(1903)
Chosen by Jay Cephas, Banana Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Northeastern University and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Young man

"You are not and yet you are: your thoughts, your deeds, above all your dreams nevertheless live."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois in The Autobiography of Due west. E. B. Du Bois(1968)
Chosen by Freeden Blume Oeur, Associate Professor of Sociology and Teaching at Tufts Academy and 2019 Du Bois Eye Mail-Doctoral Boyfriend

"We say easily, for instance, 'The ignorant ought not to vote.' We would say, 'No civilized country should take citizens too ignorant to participate in government,' and this statement is just a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule information technology."

W. E. B. Du Bois in Of the Ruling of Men (1920)
Called by Adam Dahl, Assistant Professor of Political Scientific discipline at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Fellow

"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sunday; then moved back once again toward slavery."

West. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Alexandria Russell, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Rutgers University and 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Fellow
Portrait taken by writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten.

"Children learn more from what you lot are than what you lot teach."

W. Due east. B. Du Bois
Called past Victoria I. Rizo Lenshyn, German and Scandinavian Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Centre Post-Doctoral Beau

"Reader of dead words who would live deeds, this is the flowering of my logic: I dream of a world of infinitive and valuable diversity; not in the laws of gravity or atomic weights, but in human variety in superlative and weight, colour and peel, hair and nose and lip. Simply more than especially and far above and beyond this, is a realm of true freedom: in thought and dream, fantasy and imagination; in gift, aptitude, and genius—all possible manner of difference, topped with freedom of soul to practice and be, and liberty of thought to give to a world and build into it, all wealth of inborn individuality. Each effort to cease this liberty of being is a blow at democracy—that existent democracy which is reservoir and opportunity . . . There can be no perfect democracy curtailed past color, race, or poverty. Just with all we accomplish all, even Peace."

West. Due east. B. Du Bois in The Earth and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in Earth History (Oxford University Press, 2007 [1947]), 165.
Chosen by Phillip Sinitiere, Professor of History at the Higher of Biblical Studies, Houston, TX and 2019 Du Bois Centre Postal service-Doctoral Swain

"Perhaps even higher than strength and art loom human sympathy and sacrifice as feature of Negro womanhood"

W. E. B. Du Bois in The Damnation of Women (1920)
Chosen past Sarah Holm Tanzi, 2019 Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Boyfriend

 Viewing anniversary parade from balcony of aboriginal Regal Palace in Peking, Oct. 1, 1962.

"Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far every bit the truth is ascertainable?"

W. E. B. Du Boisin Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Chosen by Eliza Araújo, Visiting Scholar at UMass AFROAm Department, Ph.D student at Universidade Federal da Paraíba, and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Only what of Black women?… I about sincerely doubtfulness if whatever other race of women could have brought its fineness upward through and so devilish a fire."

W. East. B. Du Bois
Chosen past Venus Green, Doctoral student in Folklore at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Swain

"Beneath the Veil lay right and incorrect, vengeance and honey, and sometimes throwing aside the veil, a soul of sweet Dazzler and Truth stood revealed."

Westward. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Called by Aaron Yates, Doctoral educatee in Sociology at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"I believe in pride of race and lineage and cocky; in pride of self so deep equally to scorn injustice to other selves."

Due west. Due east. B. Du Bois
Chosen past Samantha Davis, Doctoral pupil in Political Science at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Eye Graduate Beau

Portrait of Westward. E. B. Du Bois seated in written report property newspaper.

"The true significance of slavery in the U.s.a. to the whole social development of America lay in the ultimate relation of slaves to commonwealth. What were to exist the limits of democratic control in the Usa? If all labor, black as well as white, became gratuitous – were given schools and the correct to vote – what control could or should be ready to the power and action of these laborers? Was the dominion of the mass of Americans to exist unlimited, and the right to dominion extended to all men regardless of race and color, or if non, what ability of dictatorship and command; and how would belongings and privilege be protected? This was the great and chief question which was in the minds of the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States and continued in the minds of thinkers down through the slavery controversy. It withal remains with the globe every bit the problem of democracy expands and touches all races and nations."

W. Eastward. B. Du Boisin Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
Called by Mike Jirik, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at UMass and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Young man

Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more than important than right, justice and evidently common-sense.

W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction (1935)

"And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, –all men know something of poverty; non that men are wicked, –who is good? non that men are ignorant, –what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so picayune of men."

Due west. Due east. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Blackness Folk(1903)
Chosen by Stacie Klinowski, Doctoral student in the English Department at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Now is the accustomed fourth dimension, not tomorrow, not some more than convenient season. It is today that our best work can exist done and not some futurity day or time to come yr."

W. Eastward. B. Du Bois
Chosen by Heather Brinn, Ph.D Candidate in the History Department at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Centre Graduate Fellow

W. East. B. Du Bois in his role holding the start issue of The Crisis.

"The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world'south need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or equally near sky as you lot can go."

West. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen past Khaleelah Harris, Chief of Divinity educatee at Yale Divinity Schoolhouse and 2019 Du Bois Eye Graduate Beau

"But one thing is sure and that is the fact that since the fifteenth century these ancestors of mine and their other descendants have had a common history; take suffered a common disaster and have one long memory. The bodily ties of heritage betwixt the individuals of this group, vary with the ancestors that they have in common and many others: Europeans and Semites, perhaps Mongolians, certainly American Indians. But the physical bond is least and the bluecoat of colour relatively unimportant save every bit a badge; the real essence of this kinship is its social heritage of slavery; the bigotry and insult; and this heritage binds together not just the children of Africa, but extends through yellowish Asia and into the Southward Seas. It is this unity that draws me to Africa."

W. Eastward. B. Du Bois in Dusk of Dawn(1940)
Called by Swati Birla, Historical Sociologist at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Fellow

"Crucified on the vast wheel of time, I flew round and round with the Zeitgeist, waving my pen and lifting faint voices to explicate, expound and exhort; to meet, foresee and prophesy, to the few who could or would listen."

W. E. B. Du Bois
Chosen past Jingjing Zhang, Visiting Scholar in W.E.B Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst and 2019 Du Bois Center Graduate Young man