W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Marker at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Senatssaal
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin

Program

Speakers:

Prof. Dr. Peter Frensch, President of Humboldt University (Interimspräsident)
Izaak Martin, Deputy Cultural Attache, US Embassy Berlin
Jean-Ulrick Désert, artist
David Levering Lewis, Du Bois biographer
Arthur McFarlane, Du Bois’s great-grandson (via videostream)
Naa Ajele Sharp, W.E.B. Du Bois Centre, Accra, Ghana (via videostream)
Vivian Fogain, Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland ISD
Members of the Black Student Union at HU
Speaker from EOTO (requested)

Performance by Maroula Blades

Reception

Watch the ceremony live on youtube. The stream starts July 1 at 7PM.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, one of the leading figures in twentieth-century sociology, history, journalism, literature and civil rights activism, studied at what is now Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the years 1892-1894. His stay in Berlin and his studies with German economists, sociologists, and historians proved very influential for his thinking. Du Bois became the author of such seminal works as The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the editor of The Crisis (1920-1934), and the co-founder of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, 1909) and the Fifth Pan-African Congress (1945). In 1958, Humboldt-Universität awarded him an honorary doctorate.

For over twenty years, the American Studies Program has honored Du Bois’s legacy at Humboldt-Universität through two lecture series: the W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures and the Distinguished W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures. Until now, there has been no visible tribute to him on the university grounds. We are proud to announce that a plaque has been installed on the main building’s ground floor (next to the entrance to the Orbis Humboldtianus).

Du Bois is the first U.S.-American and the first Person of Color to be honored by Humboldt-Universität; he is also the first person to be honored as a former student.