Sociologist and historian William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on Feb. 23, 1868. Du Bois would go on to be credited as “the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century” by other historians for his extensive sociological studies into the African-American experience in America, and his pioneering of Pan-Africanism, the belief that people of African descent should join together to fight for their freedom. Du Bois was also a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and would publish 16 research monographs between 1897 and 1914. In 1951, he was indicted as an unregistered agent for a foreign power but was acquitted and moved to Ghana, where he lived until his death in 1963.