BIRTH | W. E. B. DuBois, February 23,

W E B Dubois (1868-1963). Photo by
Carl Van Vechtem.

This day in 1868 was born scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895, the first African-American to do so, with his dissertation on the slave trade, which Harvard published as the first in a series.

He continued his study of racism with his second book, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), which popularized Du Bois’s idea of “the talented tenth,” the  one-out-of-ten probability that a black man will become a black leader.

In 1905, he  met with 30 other African-American scholars, artists, and activists in Ontario, Canada, near Niagara Falls, to discuss the challenges facing people of color. (Blacks were not allowed rooms at white-run U.S. hotels.)

From this first meeting came the formation in 1909 of the NAACP, which pursued the goal of integrating blacks into the American middle class. John E. Milholland, the Irish-born father of Inez Milholland, became a friend of Du Bois and was the first Treasurer of the NAACP. He provided space and other resources for the NAACP office. Like Inez Milholland for a time, Du Bois was a declared socialist in 1910-12. He served as director of publicity and research for the NAACP from 1910 to 1934.

The alternative vision for American blacks was led by Booker T. Washington, who believed in the idea of a separate path of achievement for blacks. With a gift from Andrew Carnegie, Washington built up what became Tuskegee University. Washington lived for a while in Fort Salonga, Long Island.

Du Bois died in Nkrumah's Ghana in 1963. Nkrumah called him "a phenomenon."

BIRTH | Betty Friedan, February 4

Betty Friedan, 1921-2006

February 4, 2020 – This day was born feminist Betty Friedan, in Peoria, Illinois, in 1921, the year after the passage of the 19th amendment including women among the enfranchised. (Next year will be the 100th anniversary of her death.)

She was not popular in high school, being unconventional in looks and behavior. She was smart, though, and excelled at Smith.

After marrying and having a conventional suburban life, she surveyed her Smith peers at their 15th reunion and found a lot of discontent among them, which she called  "the problem that has no name." She wrote a book about this, about the myth that women were expected to find fulfillment in domestic lives as mothers and wives. Her name for the myth became a book, The Feminine Mystique (1963).

It was a best-seller, and helped kick off the "second wave" of feminism, the "first wave" being women's suffrage, which would have to be a long ("Kondratieff") wave since it lasted from 1848 to 2020. She marched with Gloria Steinem in 1970 in New York City to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the recognition of the right of women to vote. This year is the 100th anniversary; Friedan would have been 99 years old.

Betty Friedan lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y. during the summers. She spoke at a NY City Hall performance in 1995 of my suffrage play, "Take Up the Song," and again at a performance at the Springs Church. I remember picking her up at her home and dropping her off again and being impressed with her edgy take on current events. She died the same year as my mother, 2006.