ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the position of the scholar William Edward Burghardt Du Bois on issues related to race, class and gender. Du Bois was teaching and conducting research at Atlanta University in the area researchers may now properly refer to as "racial stratification" without getting due credit for building a school of thought. Du Bois was in so many respects an intellectual pioneer of the pursuit of knowledge that took him into areas of inquiry that had wholly been neglected or at the time not thought much about. Du Bois' approach was unique to scholarship at the time, and he stands out as one of the founding fathers of Sociology. Unlike arm-chair research that was popular at the time, Du Bois was clear in his approach, that to really understand the "problems of the Negro" that one must listen to the voices of those under study.
