Patricia Hill Collins W. E. B Dubois Summary

The  sociologist I chose is Patricia Hill Collins and W.E.B Dubois.
Patricia was born May 1st, 1948 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the only child born to Eunice Randolph Hill and Albert Hill, a factory worker/veteran and a secretary. After obtaining her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 1969, she continued on to earn a Master of Arts Degree in Teaching from Harvard University in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, she was a teacher and curriculum specialist at St Joseph Community School. She continued on to become the Director of the Africana Center at Tufts University. While working at Tufts, she met and married Roger Collins in 1977 and gave birth to their daughter Valerie in 1979. In 1980, she returned to Brandeis to pursue a doctorate

in sociology, which she completed in 1984. Her interest in sociology came from the fact that it was a line between science and philosophy. The sciences, with an emphasis on empirical data, can reveal some of the hidden structures and patterns that are not obvious to you. Philosophy offers explanations and interpretations. That's why she was so drawn to the two of those fields and the fact that it talks about race. While earning her PhD, Collins worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1982.

Working in African American Studies gave Patricia the intellectual space to question the boxes that people generally use to frame issues within disciplinary fields. She also developed links between Women's Studies and Sociology. In 1990, Collins published her first book, "Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment". The major themes of her work primarily concerns issues involving feminism and gender within the African-American community. She spoke about the framing of  "The Black family" calling it problematic because it neglected an understanding of families within the wider context of oppression and resistance. Some of her major works include; Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, From Black Power To Hip Hop, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism, Intersectionality, Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media and Democratic Possibilities, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice in 1998. She has some chapters in a couple of books that don't belong to her. Collins, also has numerous awards. I chose to write over her simply to just learn about her because I had

never heard of her before and It's always nice to learn something new.
The next person I decided to write over is the co founder of the NAACP, an American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, Sociologist, Historian, Author, and Editor.

Born on February 23rd in 1869 by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills on Church Street. His name is William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois. He was born five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which began the freeing of American Negro slaves. His parents are Mary Burghardt and Alfred Du Bois. They lived together temporarily after they married and then Alfred later moved east to Connecticut to build a better lifestyle for baby Du Bois and his mother. He received encouragement from teachers in the local high school after have being the first African American to graduate as valedictorian from Great Barrington High School. When his mother died in 1884, Du Bois was 16 years old and penniless but he felt that the death of his mother made it easy for him to focus on going to college because he didn't have to worry about taking care of her. To make ends meet, he worked as a timekeeper in a local mill. Du Bois went on to attend Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, for three years on a partial scholarship. While on the campus he witnessed oppression for the first time and felt that he needed to do something about it so he began to form his stance on race relations in America. He began to speak out against the atrocities of racism as a writer and chief editor of the Fisk

Herald, until his graduation in 1888. Then, went on to earn his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He liked the school  because he was among people of his own color and it was his first time recalling seeing beautiful women that didn’t feel like family or friends that he grew up with. In 1892-94 he went to further his education at the University of Berlin to observe and compare race problems in Africa, Asia, and America. In 1896 he married Nina Gomer;(later remarried to Shirley Graham after his wife died and claimed david graham as his son) they had two children Yolande and Burghardt. One later dying at the age of three. In 1897 Du Bois and his family moved to Atlanta, where he taught in economics and history at Atlanta University. Upon arriving here Du Bois witnessed more racism, lynching, Ku Klux Klan cross burnings, race riots, and disfranchisement. To challenge these acts, he published papers in the Atlantic Monthly and other journals that explored and confronted discriminatory southern societies. After leaving the university he went and joined the NAACP in 1910 and became the director of publications. In that position, he assumed control of the Crisis, the official journal of the NAACP. In the end we can very much assume that Du Bois was a very hard working man who cared about the rights and social justice of african americans all over. He wanted to be sure that his voice was heard and in doing all the research at his universities and joining multiple different organizations to write and publish pieces that got him noticed, I would say dubois completed his goal. Sadly he died one day before the great march in Washington.