Born in 1868, Du Bois lived through 95 years of tumultuous Civil Rights struggles. He was one of the founding members of the NAACP and the first editor of its influential publication, The Crisis.  Du Bois was a fiery, independent person and never bowed to conventional wisdom at the expense of what he thought was right. He wanted political and economic equality for all people, black and white.  Eventually he came to believe that this could be accomplished only through voluntary segregation.  This belief did not sit well with most other black leaders.  Near the end of his long life he became a Communist and gave up his American citizenship to become a citizen of Ghana.