00:02I very early got the idea that I was going to prove to the world that Negroes were just like
00:11other people. W.B. Du Bois is arguably the greatest black intellectual scholar activist
00:23in American history. The first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard. He's one of the most
00:33educated men in the country, not black men. One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist
00:42while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved. Du Bois understood how important it was for black
00:51people to have control of the narratives that were being written. It's a peculiar sensation,
00:56this double consciousness, the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.
01:03He built organizations and institutions that had not existed before. He founded the crisis magazine.
01:10It was the umbilical cord between the black masses. His advocacy for women's rights was unusually
01:20expansive for a man of his generation. The statement that woman is weaker than man is sheer rot. My main
01:28life work was out in the world and not at home. The boys and our father, Kwame Nkrumah, they were
01:36working on changing our colonized minds. We know why Italy has been promised Ethiopia's territory by our
01:45Department of State. Lynching and disfranchisement go merrily on. Du Bois was thought to be an enemy of
01:53the United States. He was arrested. He was handcuffed. He would not compromise his principles.
02:02He dies on the eve of the March on Washington. His was the voice
02:07voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause.
