William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who was born desperately poor in 1868, went on to become the first Black person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, a pioneer in the empirical study of racism in the U.S., the author of more than 20 books and the leader of multiple civil rights organizations, including the NAACP.
Despite his great achievements through a lifetime that spanned Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, Du Bois eventually gave up on America. After renouncing his U.S. citizenship, he lived out his final years in Accra, Ghana, as a Ghanaian citizen. “W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause,” the latest in PBS’ “American Masters” series, makes it easy to understand why, and it might have some Black viewers fantasizing about doing the same.
Despite his great achievements through a lifetime that spanned Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, Du
Bois eventually gave up on America.
The most devastating scenes in the documentary detail the relentless racial terror, especially the public lynchings, that only intensified after hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers fought in Word War I. Du Bois was a pacifist, but he hedged: He thought maybe the Allied Forces were right that the war was about advancing democracy and not imperial jockeying, and he hoped that fighting alongside white soldiers would show America just how American its Black citizens were. But America continued to deny Black people the full benefits of citizenship and maintained that same opposition during WWII as Du Bois spoke out against the mistreatment of Black soldiers and pointed out that the war could not have been won without the efforts of fighters such as the famed Tuskegee Airmen.
Du Bois is perhaps best known for his landmark study “The Souls of Black Folk,” but the intensification of racism and racial violence across the South — and in Northern cities as well — led him to seriously question “the souls of white folk,” whose bloodthirsty mob violence was designed to check Black political participation and advancement. Instead of being sufficiently condemned and punished, white mob behavior was characterized by those in power as acts of patriotism. It still is being characterized in such a way, as we’ve seen this week with the Trump administration’s creation of a weaponization fund that will be accessible by the people he pardoned after they stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
“Rebel With a Cause,” directed by Rita Coburn and narrated by Viola Davis, presents Du Bois, not unlike Black Americans more generally, as constantly thwarted, frustrated and heartbroken. His first child died after no hospital in a segregated Atlanta would treat him. He was passed over for awards and more permanent academic positions despite his pathbreaking research. On top of that, his steadfast belief in the democratic promise of America was shaken not just by mounting racial violence but also by political betrayals.
Presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson gained Du Bois’ support by claiming to support civil rights for all. But once elected, Wilson did the opposite. He segregated federal agencies, undid integration efforts, granted Southern states the leeway to establish Jim Crow segregation and even screened the racist screed “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House. It’s impossible to watch these scenes without thinking about the conservatives who are scrambling today to establish “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Du Bois, a globalist who famously wrote that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line,” understood that racism in the U.S. was about more than Black-white racial antagonism and was linked to colonialism and imperialism. A Pan-Africanist with communist leanings (he eventually joined the party), Du Bois traveled the globe and eventually settled in newly independent Ghana. He died at 95 in 1963, the day before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. Du Bois was always as much of a dreamer as he was a scholar, but at a certain point, he grew tired of waiting for a freedom that should have always been his in the country of his birth.
His belief in the promise of America was shaken not just by mounting racial violence but also by political betrayals.
Multiple stories have been published since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term about Black Americans who have decided to leave the U.S., some for Europe, some for Africa and some for Mexico or Central America. Reports from 2025 put the number of Black Americans living abroad at an estimated 700,000 and growing. And that was before last month’s Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais began a rush by Southern Republicans to wipe out Black voters’ political strength. Such moves will have more Americans wondering whether they should join the “Blaxit” movement (short for Black exit from the U.S.), which some describe as a modern wave of the Great Migration of Black Americans seeking greater opportunity and peace of mind.
Ghana holds a special place for Black Americans. It was the first sub-Saharan African country to topple European colonial rule, and the Gold Coast, now Ghana, saw the greatest volume of Africans captured and traded into the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In 2019, to mark the 400-year anniversary of the triangular slave trade, Ghana announced its “Year of Return” campaign to attract descendants of the enslaved back “home,” offering new pathways to citizenship. Hundreds of thousands answered the call to visit, and many decided to stay. When I visited last year, I understood why: It was wonderous to set aside my Blackness for a moment, or at least to let myself think I could.
Du Bois coined the phrase “double consciousness” to describe how Black Americans view themselves through the lenses of others, or at least how we are aware of others’ perception of us existing alongside our own senses of self. Double-consciousness, that sense of “twoness,” is exhausting, and Du Bois was tired. It’s no wonder he and countless Black Americans since have left America, too, searching for a “oneness” they haven’t achieved at home.
Robyn Autry
Robyn Autry is a sociology professor at Wesleyan University, and author of Desegregating the Past: The Public Life of Memory in the US and South Africa. Her next book rethinks the reality of race in America. She’s on the Substack The Pop Culture Club.