W.E.B DuBois was a scholar, writer, editor of The Crisis and other journals, co-founder of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the Pan African Congresses, international spokesperson for peace and for the rights of oppressed minorities.
The Du Bois Papers Collection (Speeches) on SiRO is a part of the W.E.B Dubois Papers collection from the University of Massachusetts Archives and Special Collections. The collection contains manuscripts of hundreds of speeches with his handwritten notes. The speeches reflect the developing ideas of Du Bois on world peace, colonialism, and developments in Africa and America.* The collection contains original manuscripts along with handwritten notes which were later edited and revised for publication.*
Du Bois’ annual lecture tours are a “richly documented yet largely overlooked and understudied aspect of Du Bois’s long and distinguished life.”** Hundreds of his lectures and speeches are archived at UMass Amherst and other collections around the country.**
Below is an excerpt from his famous speech ‘Behold the Land’ given to the Southern Negro Youth Congress commending them on their efforts and encouraging them to focus on the South as the “battle-ground” for change.*
This is another excerpt from a fragment of the famous speech ‘Socialism and the American Negro’ delivered in 1960:
*https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/series/mums312-s02