| 1868 | Born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, 23 February, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts—the only child of Alfred Du Bois and Mary Silvina Burghardt. Mother and child move to family farm owned by Othello Burghardt, Mary Silvina’s father, in South Egremont Plain. |
| 1872 | Othello Burghardt dies 19 September and family moves back to Great Barrington, where Mary Sylvina finds work as a domestic servant. |
| 1879 | Moves with mother to rooms on Railroad Street. Mother suffers stroke, which partially paralyzes her; she continues to work despite her disability. |
| 1883–1885 | Writes occasionally for Springfield Republican, the most influential newspaper in the region. Reports on local events for the New York Globe, a black weekly, and its successor, the Freeman. |
| 1884 | Graduates from Great Barrington High School. Works as time-keeper on a construction site. |
| 1885 | Mother dies 23 March at age 54. A scholarship is arranged by local Congregational churches so Du Bois can attend Fisk University in Nashville. Enters Fisk with sophomore standing. Contracts typhoid and is seriously ill in October; after recovering, resumes studies and becomes editor of the school newspaper, the Fisk Herald. |
| 1886–1887 | Teaches at a black school near Alexandria, Tennessee, for two summers. Begins singing with the Mozart Society at Fisk. |
| 1888 | Receives BA from Fisk. Enters Harvard College as a junior after receiving a Price-Greenleaf grant. |
| 1890 | Awarded second prize in Boylston oratorical competition. Receives BA cum laude in philosophy on 25 June. Delivers commencement oration on Jefferson Davis, which receives national press attention. Enters Harvard Graduate School in social science. |
| 1891 | Awarded MA in history from Harvard. Begins work on doctorate. Presents paper on the suppression of the African slave trade at meeting of American Historical Association in Washington, D.C. |
| 1892 | Awarded a Slater Fund grant to study in Germany at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. |
| 1893 | Grant is extended for an additional year. |
| 1894 | Denied doctoral degree at Friedrich Wilhelm University due to residency requirements. Denied further aid from Slater Fund; returns to Great Barrington. Receives teaching chair in classics at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio. |
| 1895 | Awarded a PhD in history; he is the first black to receive a PhD from Harvard. |
| 1896 | Marries Nina Gomer, a student at Wilberforce. His doctoral thesis, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to United States of America, 1638–1870, is published as the first volume of Harvard’s Historical Monograph Series. Hired by the University of Pennsylvania to conduct a sociological study on the black population of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward. |
| 1897 | Joins Alexander Crummell and other black intellectuals to found the American Negro Academy, an association dedicated to black scholarly achievement. Appointed professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. Begins editing a series of sociological studies on black life, the Atlanta University Studies (1898–1914). First child, Burghardt Comer Du Bois, is born in Great Barrington on 2 October. |
| 1899 | The Philadelphia Negro is published by the University of Pennsylvania. Burghardt Gomer Du Bois dies on 24 May in Atlanta and is buried in Great Barrington. Publishes articles in Atlantic Monthly and The Independent. |
| 1900 | In July attends first Pan-African Congress in London and is elected secretary. In an address to the congress, he declares that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Enters an exhibit at Paris Exposition and wins grand prize for his display on black economic development. Daughter Nina Yolande born 21 October in Great Barrington. |
| 1901 | Publishes “The Freedman’s Bureau” in Atlantic Monthly. |
| 1902 | Booker T. Washington offers Du Bois a teaching position at Tuskegee Institute, but Du Bois declines. |
| 1903 | The Souls of Black Folk is published in April. Publishes the essay “The Talented Tenth” in The Negro Problem. |
| 1904 | Resigns from Washington’s Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Negro Race due to ideological differences. Publishes “Credo” in The Independent. |
| 1905 | Holds the first conference of the Niagara Movement and is named general secretary. Founds and edits The Moon Illustrated Weekly. |
| 1906 | Second meeting of the Niagara Movement. The Moon ceases publication. The Atlanta riots, in which white mobs target blacks, occur in September; Du Bois responds by writing his most famous poem, A Litany of Atlanta. After the riots Du Bois’s wife and daughter move to Great Barrington. |
| 1907 | Niagara Movement in disarray due to debt and dissension. Founds and edits Horizon, a monthly paper that folds in 1910. |
| 1908 | Fourth conference of Niagara Movement; few attend. |
| 1909 | The National Negro Committee, an organization dominated by white liberals, is formed (it will later be renamed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]); Du Bois joins. The fifth and last Niagara Conference is held. John Brown, a biography, is published. |
| 1910 | Appointed director of publications and research for the NAACP; becomes the only black member of the board of directors. Moves to New York City to found and edit The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP. |
| 1911 | Attends Universal Races Conference in London. Publishes his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. Joins the Socialist Party. |
| 1912 | Endorses Woodrow Wilson in The Crisis. Resigns from Socialist Party. |
| 1913 | Writes and presents The Star of Ethiopia, a pageant staged to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation. |
| 1914 | Supports women’s suffrage in The Crisis. Supports the Allied effort in World War I despite declaring that imperialist rivalries are a cause of the war. |
| 1915 | Booker T. Washington dies on 14 November. The Negro is published. Protests D. W. Griffith’s racist film The Birth of a Nation. |
| 1917 | Undergoes kidney operations early in the year. Supports the establishment of separate training camps for black officers as the only way to insure black participation in combat. |
| 1918 | In his July editorial for The Crisis, he publishes “Close Ranks,” urging cooperation with white citizens. The War Department offers Du Bois a commission as a captain in the army in an effort to address racial issues, but the offer is withdrawn after controversy. Goes to Europe in December to evaluate the conditions of black troops for the NAACP. |
| 1919 | Organizes the first Pan-African Conference in Paris, and is elected executive secretary. Returns to the U.S. in April and writes the editorial “Returning Soldiers,” which the U.S. postmaster Albert Burleson tries to suppress; the issue sells 106,000 copies, the most ever for The Crisis. |
| 1920 | Founds and edits The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for children. Publishes Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, a collection of essays. |
| 1921 | The second Pan-African Conference is held in London, Brussels, and Paris. Du Bois signs group protest against Henry Ford’s support of the anti-Semitic forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. |
| 1922 | Works for passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which is blocked by Senate. |
| 1923 | Writes “Back to Africa,” an article attacking Garvey for encouraging racial division. Organizes the third Pan-African Conference in London, Paris, and Lisbon; declines to attend Paris session due to disproval of French assimilationists. Receives the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. Travels to Liberia to represent the United States at the Liberian presidential inauguration. |
| 1924 | Publishes The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America. |
| 1925 | Contributes “The Negro Mind Reaches Out” to Alain Locke’s The New Negro: An Interpretation, one of the most influential works of the Harlem Renaissance. |
| 1926 | Founds the Krigwa Players, a Harlem theater group. Travels to the Soviet Union to examine life after the Bolshevik Revolution. Praises Soviet achievements in The Crisis. |
| 1927 | The fourth and last Pan-African Conference is held in New York City. |
| 1928 | Daughter Yolande weds the poet Countee Cullen in Harlem; the marriage ends within a year. Du Bois’s novel, Dark Princess, A Romance, is published. |
| 1929 | The Crisis faces financial collapse. |
| 1930 | Awarded honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Howard University. |
| 1932 | Du Bois’s daughter Yolande and her second husband, Arnett Williams, have a daughter, Du Bois Williams. |
| 1933 | Losing faith in the possibilities of integration, Du Bois begins to publicly examine his position on segregation. Accepts a one-year visiting professorship at Atlanta University. Relinquishes the editorship of The Crisis but retains general control of the magazine. |
| 1934 | Writes editorials encouraging voluntary segregation and criticizing the integrationist policies of the NAACP. Resigns as editor of The Crisis and from the NAACP. Accepts the chairmanship in sociology at Atlanta University. Named the editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of the Negro, which is never completed or published. |
| 1935 | Publishes the revolutionary historical study, Black Reconstruction. |
| 1936 | Spends five months in Germany on a grant to study industrial education. Travels through Poland, the Soviet Union, Manchuria, China, and Japan. |
| 1938 | Receives honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Atlanta University and honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Fisk. |
| 1939 | Black Folk, Then and Now, a revised edition of The Negro is published. |
| 1940 | Publishes his first autobiography, Dusk of Dawn. Founds and edits Phylon, a quarterly magazine examining black issues. Awarded honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at Wilberforce. |
| 1941–1942 | Proposes and then coordinates the study of southern blacks for black land-grant colleges. |
| 1943 | Organizes the First Conference of Negro Land-Grant Colleges at Atlanta University. Informed by Atlanta University that he must retire by 1944, he attempts to have the policy reversed. |
| 1944 | Named first black member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Despite his protests, he is retired by Atlanta University. Although hesitant to work with Walter White, he rejoins the NAACP as director of special research and moves back to New York. Publishes the essay “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom” in Rayford Logan’s collection What the Negro Wants. |
| 1945 | Writes a weekly column for the Chicago Defender. Serves as consultant, with Mary McLeod Bethune and Walter White, at the San Francisco conference that drafts the United Nations charter; criticizes the charter for failing to oppose colonialism. In October he presides at the Fifth Pan-African Conference in Manchester, England. Nina Du Bois suffers a stroke, which paralyzes her left side. Publishes the first volume of Encyclopedia of the Negro: Preparatory Volume with coauthor Guy B. Johnson. Publishes an anti-imperialist analysis of the postwar era, Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace. Resigns from the American Association of University Professors in protest of conferences held in segregated hotels. |
| 1946 | Invites leaders of twenty organizations to New York to draft a petition to the United Nations on behalf of African Americans; the appeal becomes an NAACP project. |
| 1947 | Edits and writes the introduction to An Appeal to the World, a collection of essays sponsored by the NAACP to enlist international support for the fight against racial discrimination in America. At the United Nations, the appeal is supported by the Soviet Union but opposed by the United States. Publishes The World and Africa. |
| 1948 | Fired from the NAACP after his memorandum critical of Walter White and the NAACP board of directors appears in the New York Times. Supports Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate for president. Takes unpaid position as vice chairman (with Paul Robeson) of the Council of African Affairs, an organization listed as “subversive” by the U.S. attorney general. Begins writing for the National Guardian. |
| 1949 | Helps sponsor and addresses the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace in New York City. Attends the First World Congress of the Defenders of Peace in Paris. Travels to the All-Union Conference of Peace Proponents in Moscow. |
| 1950 | Nina Gomer Du Bois dies in Baltimore in July; she is buried in Great Barrington. Elected chairman of the Peace Information Center, an organization dedicated to the international peace movement and the banning of nuclear weapons. Organization disbands under pressure from the Department of Justice. Du Bois is nominated by the American Labor Party for U.S. senator from New York. Receives 4 percent of the vote statewide, 15 percent in Harlem. |
| 1951 | Secretly marries Shirley Graham, aged 45, a writer, teacher, and civil rights activist, on Valentine’s Day. Indicted earlier that month as an “unregistered foreign agent” under the McCormick Act: Du Bois, along with four other officers of the Peace Information Center, is alleged to be agents of foreign interests. He suffers the indignity of being handcuffed, searched, and fingerprinted before being released on bail in Washington, D.C. National lecture tours and a fundraising campaign for his defense expenses raise over $35,000. The five-day trial in Washington ends in acquittal. |
| 1952 | Publishes In Battle for Peace, an account of the trial. The State Department refuses Du Bois a passport on grounds that his foreign travel is not in the national interest. Later, the State Department demands a statement declaring that he is not a Communist Party member; Du Bois refuses. Advocacy of leftwing political positions widens the distance between Du Bois and the black mainstream. |
| 1953 | Prints a eulogy for Stalin in National Guardian. Reads 23rd Psalm at the funeral of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed as Soviet spies. Awarded International Peace Prize by the World Peace Council. |
| 1954 | Surprised by the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, which outlaws public school segregation, Du Bois declares “I have seen the impossible happen.” |
| 1955 | Refused a U.S. passport to attend the World Youth Festival in Warsaw, Poland. |
| 1956 | Supports Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott. Refused a passport in order to lecture in the People’s Republic of China. |
| 1957 | Publishes The Ordeal of Mansart, the first volume of the Black Flame, a trilogy of historical novels chronicling black life from Reconstruction to the mid-twentieth century. A bust of Du Bois is unveiled at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library. Refused a passport to attend independence ceremonies in Ghana. His great-grandson Arthur Edward McFarlane II is born. |
| 1958 | A celebration for Du Bois’s ninetieth birthday is held at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City; 2,000 people attend. Begins writing The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, drawing largely from earlier work. A Supreme Court ruling allows Du Bois to obtain a passport. His subsequent world tour includes England, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. He receives an honorary doctorate from Humbolt University in East Berlin, known as Friedrich Wilhelm University when Du Bois attended in 1892–1894. |
| 1959 | Meets with Nikita Khrushchev. In Beijing, makes broadcast to Africa over Radio Beijing and meets with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Awarded the International Lenin Prize. Publishes the second volume of the Black Flame trilogy, Mansart Builds a School. |
| 1960 | Participates in the celebration of Ghana’s establishment as a republic. Travels to Nigeria for the inauguration of its first African governor-general. |
| 1961 | Du Bois’s daughter Yolande dies of a heart attack in March. Worlds of Color, the final book in the Black Flame trilogy, is published. Du Bois accepts the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah to move to Ghana and direct a revival of the Encyclopedia Africana project. Before leaving for Africa, Du Bois applies for membership in the Communist Party. |
| 1962 | Travels to China. His autobiography is published in the Soviet Union. |
| 1963 | Becomes a citizen of Ghana. Turns ninety-five in February. Dies in Accra, Ghana, on 27 August, on the eve of the civil rights march on Washington. W. E. B. Du Bois is buried in a state funeral in Accra on the 29th. |
| 1968 | The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois is published in the United States. |
| 1992 | Honored by the United States Postal Service with a 29-cent commemorative stamp as part of the Black Heritage Series, and again in 1998, with a 32-cent commemorative stamp. |
| 1999 | Du Bois’s efforts to produce alternately an encyclopedia of the Negro and of Africa and Africans are realized when Encarta Africana is published by Microsoft, and Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr. is published by Basic Civitas Books. In 2005 a second much-expanded edition of Africana is published by Oxford University Press. |