A Portrait of a Sellout
During the height of World War I, W.E.B. Dubois issued one of the most widely-known and least-understood propositions in the history of civil rights protest. In the July 1918 issue of the monthly NAACP journal the Crisis, he [DuBois] called on African Americans to ˇ§forget [their] special grievances and close ranksˇ¨ with white Americans and the Allies for the duration of the war. This article of course, left many Black political leaders as well as the general African-American public utterly baffled; ˇ§The wider significance of the controversy over ˇ§Close ranksˇ¨ and the proposed commission lies in what it reveals about the potential for schism among black leaders and organizations at a pivotal moment in the development of civil rights thoughtˇ¨ . [Marcus Garvey, wrote in the Negro World August 1918 that DuBoisˇ¦ defense was ˇ§a desperate effort to bolster up a bad case by far-fetched conclusionsˇ¨. Garvey dismissed the idea that by putting their country before their rights during the war, blacks would ultimately benefit. By ˇ§dickering with an official position,ˇ¨ he claimed, Du Bois had show he was no longer the leader he had been in the Niagara Movement. Instead, he was ˇ§a follower of the masses.ˇ¨] How can one who claims he
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Some common words found in the essay are:
WEB DuBois, Civil Rights, Joel Spingarn, Americans Allies, Movement Instead, DuBois Blacks, Intelligence Branch, World August, Philip Randolph, WEB Dubois, civil rights, military intelligence, ˇ§close ranksˇ¨, military intelligence branch, world war, intelligence branch, dubois position, du bois, niagara movement, marcus garvey, black political,
Approximate Word count = 1010
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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