W. E. B. Du Bois and American Anthropology

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>W. E. B. Du Bois had a major impact on anthropology because he served as a model and mentor to Franz Boas as he was becoming a public intellectual. Anthropology in the United States changed significantly when Franz Boas (1858–1942) began challenging ideas of racial inferiority and the hierarchy of cultures in the popular press. In first decades of the 20th century the two had developed close relationship. It was Du Bois who invited, pulled, and recruited Franz Boas onto the public stage and into the struggle for Black liberation. Du Bois saw Boas as an ally, and he leveraged anthropology in two specific ways. The first was using anthropology to showcase advanced African civilizations of the past. Second, he used anthropology to demonstrate that there was no proof that one race was inferior to any other. Finally, Du Bois deployed anthropologically inflected categories and types to describe and document the diversity of African American communities.</jats:p>