W.E.B Du Bois

5 Pages 1366 Words

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois wanted to go to college and he did. However, he had a specific goal in mind. He wanted to attend Harvard University. He did that too also. Du Bois’s life was changed at Harvard University and he got through Harvard with an unusual motivation scheme.
“I had always thought as a boy, that I was going to Harvard,” (10) says Du Bois. Harvard was Du Bois first choice in college and he did not go there when he first entered college because he did not have the money. He happened to go to Fisk University in Tennessee.
Du Bois said in his book Dusk Of Dawn, “When I learned that Harvard, seeking to shed something of its New England provincialism, was offering scholarships in various parts of the country, I immediately wrote, and to my astonishment of teachers and fellow students, not to mention myself, received Price Greenleaf Aid of $300.”
He had spent three years at Fisk but still decided to go Harvard because he felt that he could grow in society using this knowledge. There shows signs of determination for W.E.B. Du Bois. Leaving a school for another shows, that he want something else and was going to do it no matter how it came at him.
Du Bois said, “I was happy at Harvard but for unusual reasons. One of them was my acceptance of racial segregation.” (12) He goes on to say, “ Had I gone from Greta Barrington high school directly to Harvard I would have sought companionship with my white brothers and would have been disappointed and embittered by a discovery of social limitations to which I had not been used to. However, I came by way of Fisk and the South and there I had acceptance and embraced eagerly the companionship of those of my own color.
At Fisk University Du Bois learned all about how segregation played into the role of society in which he lived in. He saw discrimination where he lived and in ways that he never imagined. One of the first things he saw was separation on rail...