ABSTRACT
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on 23 February 1868, in the small town of Great Barrington in western Massachusetts. At high school Du Bois had the first unforgettable experience of racial prejudice. When he was in high school, with the encouragement of the white principal Frank Hosmer who was free from racial bias, Du Bois took the college preparatory courses which included algebra, geometry, Latin and Greek. After his graduation from the high school, Du Bois dreamed of going to Harvard. In the fall of 1888, Du Bois was admitted into Harvard College as a junior. After his graduation from Harvard, Du Bois felt that he was still not fully prepared to cope with the problems people of his own race faced. In October, 1892, with a grant from the Slater Fund he entered Berlin University to study History, Economics and Sociology.
