  The two men were from profoundly different backgrounds. Washington had been born into slavery, but with the aid of education and character development at Hampton Institute he was able to advance to national and international prominence as an educator and figure of unprecedented influence, which he recounted in his widely read and inspiring autobiography Up From Slavery (Washington 1901; 1963). Du Bois, on the other hand, never had living experience with slavery, nor, even, with much in the way of invidious racial discrimination before entering college in the South. With undergraduate degrees from Fisk University and Harvard University, studies at the University of Berlin, and a Ph.D. in History from Harvard, Du Bois was one of a very few exceptionally highly educated persons in the United States. Drawing on his learning and with arrogant confidence in his education-enhanced, penetrating, creative, and critical intellect, varied, frequent, and penetrating scholarly and creative explorations of the history, conditions, and future prospects of the Negro and other oppressed races, as well as of Western Civilization, became his passionate and committed life’s work.