  Du Bois far outstripped Washington in the range of his (Du Bois’s) concerns, the depths of his explorations, and the extent of his seminal involvements in and contributions to international organizations and movements pressing for independence for colonized African and other peoples, his contributions to a number of the international Pan-African Conferences (1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945) and Movement being but one example. And of particular note, Du Bois studied philosophy with William James and others while a student at Harvard, and, for a moment, considered pursuing a career in the discipline. Though he chose otherwise, his vast and rich articulations are frequently philosophically novel and astute and thus all the more engaging for researchers, scholars, teachers, artists, and millions of readers in various educated publics. His The Souls of Black Folk (1903), for example, has been a seminal text for generations of African Americans, and others, who were coming of age intellectually. Many were aided, especially, by his poignant characterization and exploration of the vexing tensions of the experience of “double consciousness”—of the “twoness” of being both Negro and American—and by his promising exploration of how best to work at resolving the tension by ‘merging’ the two selves into one ‘truer’ self.