The W. E. B. DuBois Memorial Address presented annually at the Community Church of Boston
William E. Alberts, Ph. D, fourth minister (1978-1991), Community Church of Boston
It is most appropriate that The Community Church of Boston established an annual William Edward Burghardt DuBois Memorial Address. Dr. DuBois was a prophet of black liberation and of world peace, and a frequent speaker from our pulpit.
Dr. DuBois had an incisive understanding of the subtlety and pervasiveness of white racism in this country. He saw racism, the product of centuries of conditioning, as permeating American capitols, commerce, courts, customs, churches and colleges. Underneath he perceived the racism of American imperialism: the use of prejudice as a convenient way of advancing and rationalizing the vested economic motive of white people. And his view of imperialism included "the domination of white Europe over black Africa and yellow Asia, through political power built on economic control of labor, income and ideas." (Dusk of Dawn, DuBois' autobiography)
Dr. DuBois exposed two other subtle and effective dynamics of white racism: blaming the victim and using willing victims of racism as tokenistic fronts to give the appearance of commitment to democracy, while actually continuing to practice discrimination. The confronting of these two dynamics by DuBois is seen in his criticism of Booker T. Washington for the latter's excusing the curtailment of black civil rights and putting the "chief onus" of the problem back on black people themselves. Because of Washington's conciliatory attitude that led him to ask black people to follow a policy of accommodation and submission, DuBois laid on him "a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disenfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and public school and the firmer establishment of color cast in this land."
In 1905, DuBois "initiated a call to a conference for 'aggressive action' which became known as the Niagara Movement and was instrumental in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People." From 1910 to 1935, he was editor of the NAACP's The Crisis magazine, using it as a medium to encourage black writers and to present his own commentary.
In 1951, at 83 years of age, DuBois and four colleagues of the former Peace Information Center were charged with failing to register as "foreign agents." The trial received world-wide attention. While the four had actually been advocating peace as an act of conscience, "the public was deliberately given to understand by spokesmen of the government and by the press that we were accused of lying, spying and treason in the pay of the Soviet Union" (In the Battle for Peace). The government's aim was to silence opposition to the undeclared war on Korea.
DuBois stated that the real aim of their prosecution "was to prevent American citizens of any sort from daring to think or talk against Big Business; to reduce Asia to colonial subserviency to American industry; to reweld the chains of Africa; to increase United States control of the Caribbean and South America; and above all to crush socialism in the Soviet Union and China."
DuBois also wrote, "Armistice Day, November 11, had interrupted the trial and given a three-day recess. I took the occasion to fill a conditional promise to speak at the Community Church in Boston, where for some years I have made annual addresses. Mr. Lothrop, the minister, in introducing me, reminded the congregation that a spiritual founder of this church, Theodore Parker, had also once been an indicted criminal. I said in part:
"'The real causes of World War will persist and threaten so long as peoples in Europe and America are determined to control the wealth of most of the world by means of cheap labor and monopolies. Against this, a resurgence of the revolt of the poor will raise a new Russia from the dead if we kill this one, and birth a new theory of communism so long as Africa, Asia and South America see the impossibility of otherwise escaping poverty, ignorance and disease. . . .
"'We who have known a better America find the present scene almost unbelievable. A great silence has fallen on the real soul of the nation. We are smearing loyal citizens on the paid testimony of self-confessed liars, traitors and spies. We are making the voice of America the babble of cowards paid to travel. . . .
"'My words are not a counsel of despair. Rather they are a call to a new courage and determination to know the truth. Four times this nation faced disaster and recovered. . . . What we have done we can do again. But not by silence-not by refusing to face the ugly facts.'"
DuBois returned to the court to bear witness to black liberation and world peace. He and his four colleagues were acquitted by an Irish Catholic federal judge from Massachusetts who was sitting on the Washington, D.C. federal court.
DuBois' last public address in this country was given at The Community Church of Boston when services were held in the Conservatory Auditorium. DuBois left the United States to accept an invitation from Ghana to continue a series of studies on Africa.
On October 1, 1961, DuBois wrote that "capitalism . . . is doomed to self-destruction" as "no universal selfishness can bring social good to all." He concluded that "communism-the effort to give all men what they need and ask of each the best they can contribute-is the only way of human life." (Letter to Gus Hall)
DuBois died in Accra, Ghana at age 95 on the evening of August 27, 1963, one day before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement made their historic march on Washington. At that event, Roy Wilkins, then Executive Director of the NAACP, spoke first and used that occasion to hold up DuBois' radical spirit as having helped to bring that march into being.
THE W. E. B. DuBOIS MEMORIAL ADDRESS
1st-January 31, 1982
Ewart Guinier
Dr. W. E. B. DuBois: A Voice for Today's Wilderness of Racism and Militarism
2nd-February 20, 1983
Angela Y. Davis
Mayor Eddie Carthan and the Struggle Against Racist and Political Repression
3rd-February 12, 1984
Caldwell Taylor
The Caribbean Since the United States' Invasion of Grenada
4th-March 17, 1985
Willard R. Johnson
Apartheid and the Moral and Political Agenda for America
5th-February 23, 1986
James Jennings
Struggles for Justice and World Peace and the Black Dilemma
6th-February 22, 1987
Herbert Aptheker
W. E. B. DuBois: A Man for Peace
7th-March 6, 1988
Loretta J. Williams
Confronting the Color Line in America
8th-March 12, 1989
James E. Jackson
W. E. B. DuBois: Light for the Path
9th-February 18, 1990
Dessima M. Williams
The Logic of Mutuality: Security and Self-Determination in the Caribbean
10th-February 23, 1992
Samuel W. Allen, poet
11th-February 28, 1993
Lucius Walker, Jr.
A Humane Policy Toward Cuba Must Be Adopted!
12th-February 20, 1994
Lee D. Baker
Remembering and Revisiting DuBois for the 21st Century
13th-February 26, 1995
David Graham DuBois
Denial and the Color Line
14th-February 25, 1996
Barbara Arnwine
Racial Politics and Its Challenge to the Community
15th-February 23, 1997
Thandeka
Religion and White Middle-Class Poverty in America
16th-February 22, 1998
Elias Farajajé-Jones
Spiritual Politics of Passionate Intensity
17th-March 7, 1999
William Julius Wilson
Toward a New Political Strategy for the Racial Equality Movement
18th-February 27, 2000
Chuck Turner
The Truth Shall Set Us Free
19th-February 25, 2001
Mel King
The Fascism of the Florida Vote & the Color-Blindness of the U.S. Left
20th-February 24, 2002
Donaldo Macedo
Dancing with Bigotry: The Poisoning of Ethnic and Racial Identities
21st-February 23, 2003
Irene Gendzier
Dying to Forget: The Legacy of Colonialism and the Future of the Middle East
22nd-February 24, 2004
Kenneth C. Edelin
The Other War
23rd-February 27, 2005
Rev. Alma Faith Crawford
Inherent, Not Inerrant: Overcoming Fundamentalism with the Authority of Human Experience
24th-May 7, 2006
J. Soffiyah Elijah
The People as Enemy/War as Social Control
25th-May 20, 2007
Sean Gonsalves
The New Crisis in Journalism
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