William du Bois

• Educated in Law at Harvard
• founded Niagara Movement and the NAACP , encouraging African Americans to mount legal challenges to racist state laws
• Was contemporary of Washington , he questioned his failure to address to issue of segregation
• Fought entrenched racist views and challenged Social Darwinism in the early year of 20th century
• Was increasingly marginalised and suspected of Communism by the 1940s