ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois's contributions to the development of Black or African American Studies. Although the modern Black Studies movement did not begin until the 1960s, Du Bois made the case for Black Studies in the early days of the twentieth century and actually carried out Black Studies research long before the term was coined. In reality, Du Bois was the father, or perhaps, people might say, the intellectual grandfather of modern African American Studies. Developing new paradigms and frames of reference and conducting research was only half of the responsibility. The other half involved applying this new knowledge in the struggle against racial oppression. To know carried with it the responsibility to do was the first principle of the Black Studies movement. According to proponents of Black Studies, all efforts to know and explain the world, to explain social reality, begin necessarily with a set of prior assumptions about the nature of that reality.
