With a doctorate from Fisk University, W.E.B. DuBois taught at the African Methodist Episcopal University at Wilberforce, OH, and then at the University of Pennsylvania. He helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and was editor of its publication until 1932. He left the NAACP that year and returned in 1944 as director of research. Four years later, he permanently left the NAACP and joined the U.N. Council on African Affairs as chairman.

In 1951 he was part of the leftist Peace Information Bureau. He traveled extensively in the Communist bloc nations with the United Nations during the 1950s. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1959. At the age of 93 he moved to Accra, Ghana, to direct and edit the Encyclopedia Africana. He died two years later.