Web Dubois On Being Crazy Essay

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W.E.B. DuBois’ “On Being Crazy”
William Edward Burghardt DuBois, also known as Web Dubois, was an African American author and editor in the late 1800’s and 1900’s. He has composed many short stories in his time, but the one that stands out the most is the story “On being Crazy”. It uses repetition, symbolism, phrasing, and realism to emphasize the significance of the narrative.
William Edward Burghardt DuBois was a sociologist, philosopher, and a black leader of the NAACP, and Martin Luther King Jr. once said that ‘history cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths’ (Martin Luther King). DuBois was born 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and had a happy childhood. However, later in his life, he became aware of the “vast veil” (history.com) that parted him and his fellow white students. Mary Burghardt DuBois was his mother and Alfred DuBois was his father. William’s father left when he was young, and he and his mother did not have enough money. Since his mom had a stroke, she couldn’t work that much, so they had to live with his grandmother. DuBois was very well educated and was top of his class in high school, but DuBois had many obstacles in his life. They lacked money, his mother was sick, racial barriers, and later, his mother passed away after he graduated high school. His church raised some money to pay for his tuition. DuBois’s want of attending Harvard was still impossible because there was not enough money. He had the help necessary to attend Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee when he was sixteen years old. DuBois was also the “first black man to receive a doctorate at Harvard” (http://www.duboislc.org).
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