Philosopher, Who Helped to Found N.A.A.C.P., Later Turned to Communism

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Special to The New York Times

Accra, Ghana, Wednesday Aug. 28 - W.E.B. DuBois, the American Negro
philosopher and writer, who settled in Ghana a few years ago, died last
night, the Government announced. He was 95 years old. Dr. DuBois, who
had come here as a special guest of President Kwame Nkrumah, was
director of the Encyclopedia Africana, which is sponsored by the
Government. He became a citizen of Ghana this year.

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**Leader of Negro Thought**

For more than half a century William Edward Burghardt DuBois was a
monumental and often controversial, leader of Negro thought.

As a sociologist, educator and writer he frequently disagreed not only
with whites but with members of his own race. Early in his career, he
challenged the philosophy of Booker T. Washington. Dr. DuBois was one of
the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, but later broke with the organization under conditions of
bitterness.

During his later years, he was active in many left-wing and Communist
activities. In the fall of 1961 - at the age of 93 - he joined the
Communist party. At about the same time, he went to Ghana as head of the
secretariat planning the new Negro encyclopedia.

Dr. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Mass. on Feb. 23, 1868, five
years after the Emancipation Proclamation. He was born, as he phrased it
in his autobiography, \"Dusk at Dawn,\" \"with a flood of Negro blood, a
grain of French, a bit of Dutch, but, thank God no \'Anglo-Saxon.\' \"

In Great Barrington, a tolerant, provincial town, Dr. DuBois grew up as
one of about 200 (?) Negroes among 5,000 inhabitants. His mother\'s
family, among whom he was raised, had lived in a relatively humble
situation in a community where social status was determined by income
and ancestry and not by color.

Because of this economic leveling, Dr. DuBois was not faced with racial
discrimination until he had left New England to attend college in the
South.

**At Fisk and Harvard**

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fisk University in 1888,
he attended Harvard and received the same degree there in 1890, a Master
of Arts in 1891 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1895.

His doctoral thesis, \"The Oppression of the African Slave Trade to the
United States,\" was the first volume published in the Harvard
Historical Studies.

He taught successively at Wilberforce University, the University of
Pennsylvania and Atlanta University, resigning from Atlanta in 1909 to
become founder of the N.A.A.C.P. and the editor of its publication, The
Crisis.

Dr. DuBois disagreed with the doctrine of Booker T. Washington that the
Negro should raise himself by his own bootstraps and strive for an
education basically vocational. Dr. DuBois envisioned the education of a
\"talented 10^th^\" that would found a self-sufficient Negro society.

He remained editor of The Crisis until 1934, when he broke with the
N.A.A.C.P. on questions of policy. For the next 10 years, he taught at
Atlanta once more, only to resign again in 1944 to return to the
N.A.A.C.P. as director of research. Four years later, after another
disagreement, he left the N.A.A.C.P. for good.

Dr. DuBois then served successively as consultant to the United Nations
upon its formation in San Francisco in 1945, as head of the Council on
African Affairs, and, in 1949, as chairman of the Peace Information
Center in New York.

The center was the sponsor in this country for the so-called Stockholm
Peace Petition, a movement characterized by the Secretary of State, Dean
Acheson, as Communist inspired.

Dr. DuBois and other officers of the center were indicted by a Federal
grand jury on a charge of failure to register as foreign agents. They
were acquitted after a trial in which the chief defense counsel was the
late Representative, Vito Marcantonio of Manhattan.

**Won Peace Council Prize**

In 1950, Dr. DuBois ran unsuccessfully for United States Senator on the
American Labor party ticket.

In 1952, he received a Grand International Prize valued at \$7000 from
the World Peace Council, headed by the French scientist Frederic
Joliot-Curie.

Among Dr. DuBois\' major writings were \"Souls of Black Folk,\"
published in 1903; \"Darkwater\" 1920; \"Dark Princess\" 1924; \"The
Encyclopedia of the Negro\" 1931-1946; \"The Gift of the Black Folk\"
and \"In Battle for Peace\" 1952.

Henry James in \"The American Scene: published in 1907 wrote:

\"How can everything have so gone that the only Southern book of any
distinction published for many a year is \'The Souls of Black Folk.\' \"

In his application to join the Communist party, Dr. DuBois wrote that he
had been \"long and slow\" in deciding to apply for membership, \"but at
last my mind is settled.\" He said that he had joined the Socialist
party in 1911, but had resigned to support Woodrow Wilson.

For the next 20 years, he said he attacked the Democrats, Republicans
and Socialists. He said that he had \"praised the attitudes of the
Communists but opposed their tactics in the case of the Scottsboro boys
and their advocacy of a Negro state.\"

In recent years, Dr. DuBois traveled extensively in Communist China and
the Soviet Union. On his 91^st^ birthday, he was honored in Peking by a
celebration attended by Premier Chou En-lai.

**Honored By Soviet**

In 1959, Dr. DuBois received the Soviet Lenin Peace Prize \"for
strengthening world peace.\"

Dr. DuBois was the first Negro to be elected to the National Institute
of Arts and Letters. He was also a life member and fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In manner, Dr. DuBois was reserved and somewhat formal, although his few
intimate friends found him warm and companionable. He was distinguished
by a mustache and goatee, pince-nez glasses, and he invariably carried a
cane. His dress was immaculate.

His first wife, Mrs. Nina Gomer DuBois, whom he married in 1896, died in
1950, and a year later, he married Shirley Graham, a writer.

Surviving are his widow and a daughter, Mrs. Yolanda Williams of
Baltimore. Dr. DuBois\' home in this country was at 31 Grace Court,
Brooklyn.

Obituary page of the \"New York Times,\" Wednesday, August 28, 1963.