While we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, let us not forget that fifty years ago yesterday, the great William Edward Burghardt Du Bois died in Ghana. Du Bois was, I would judge, the greatest American social scientist [not the greatest Black social scientist ], a brilliant historian of Reconstruction and urban life, a central figure in the organization of African-Americans, and, in the end, an outcast from the land of his birth. I cherish the honor of having served for sixteen years in a university department that bears his name.
May his name be long remembered by all who have learned from his life and his work.
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