The change of his ideas, which led him to believe that racism was only part of a greater injustice, is best described in the second introduction to The Souls of Black Folk, written in 1953, 50 years after the book's first publication: "I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and this is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that to maintain this privilege men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race."
Colonial Africa
Another theme that entered his life in this period was an interest in the affairs of colonial Africa. In 1900 he attended a conference on African issues in London. Similar gatherings in 1911, 1919, 1921, and later, were held in Europe and at least partly organized by DuBois. These meetings, held in the capitals of Europe, began to include African leaders and were part of the beginnings of the modern emancipation of Africa. A 1945 pan-African conference in England enabled DuBois to meet such men as Nkrumah and Kenyatta. This American contact with Africa not only aided the struggling colonies and made DuBois beloved by all African peoples, but also brought home to DuBois and other American Negroes an awareness of their vast heritage and a growth of Negro interest in African affairs and African culture.
With the great depression Crises began to fail, and DuBois realized that when the NAACP began to support the magazine financially he would no longer control its policy. So in 1933 he returned to Atlanta University for 10 years of research and teaching. By now he had published nine books, including two novels, Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) and Dark Princess (1928). It was in 1935 that he finally brought forth his monumental study, Black Reconstruction in America.
DuBois went back to work for the NAACP in 1944, and became the group's consultant to the United Nations. At that time Paul Robeson was Chairman of the Council on American Affairs and Dubois became associated with this group. But in 1946 the Cold War began and in 1947 the Justice Department issued a list of "subversive" organizations; it included the Council in its witch-hunt. DuBois' refusal to eschew either his views or his associations led to his swift dismissal from the NAACP in 1948.
Runs for Senate
Soon afterwards, upon the invitation of Vito Marcantonio, Dr. DuBois ran in New York for a seat in the U.S. Senate on the Progressive Party Ticket. He obtained only 270,000 of the 3,000,000 votes and soon after this defeat was asked by the Department of Justice to register as an agent of a foreign government. Marcantonio defended DuBois and he was finally acquitted, but he wrote, "the growl of a mob, the personal threat of murder ... nothing has cowed me as that day when I took my seat in a Washington courtroom as an indicted criminal." Shortly thereafter his wife died.
Despite these personal tragedies, DuBois did not leave his work. In the evening of his life he married a second wife, Shirley Graham. In a small house in Brooklyn, DuBois continued his research. Though in his own country he had been persecuted, peoples of the new nations did not forget him. Delegations from the United Nations visited his home. His 90th birthday was honored throughout the People's Republic of China. The Soviet Union awarded him the Lenin International Peace Prize. And at the end of his years Dr. Kwame Nkrumah invited him to come to Africa and begin what someday may be considered his greatest contribution, the Encyclopaedia Africana. He became a citizen of Ghana three years before his death. The New England boy, born when slavery died, died belonging to the re-birth of his people.
The following message was dated June 26, 1957, and had been given to his wife for safekeeping until the hour of his death:
"It is much more difficult in theory than actually to say the last goodbye to one's loved ones and friends and to all the familiar things of life.
"I am going to take a long, deep and endless sleep. This is not a punishment but a privilege to which I have looked forward for years.
"I have loved my work, I have loved people and my play, but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life; that what I have done III or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done.
"And that peace will be my applause.
"One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.
"The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.
"Good-bye."