PBS Documentary Explores The Complex Life And Lasting Voice Of W.E.B. Du Bois
The voice and legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois remain deeply present more than 60 years after his death, and a new PBS documentary is working to show why his life still speaks to the political, cultural and journalistic fights of today.
“W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause,” a new two hour film from Emmy and Peabody Award winning director and writer Rita Coburn, chronicles the nearly century long life of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. The documentary uses dramatic readings from Common, Jeffrey Wright and Courtney B. Vance, along with narration from Viola Davis, to revisit the work and world of one of the most influential figures in Black history.
Du Bois was an author, scholar, sociologist, journalist, Pan Africanist and civil rights leader whose work stretched across print journalism, theater, essays, historical research and political activism. His fight for freedom, dignity and full citizenship for Black people made him one of the defining voices of the 20th century.
Rita Coburn Brings Du Bois’ Words To Life
Coburn said she first began working on the project in 2022 with the idea of allowing contemporary voices to read Du Bois’ own writing. The goal was to place his words in the mouths of artists whose own careers and cultural presence could help carry the weight of his message.
“My idea was to initially get contemporary voices to read his writing,” Coburn told theGrio. “I wanted a young person, a middle aged person, and an older person to do it, but I couldn’t find and get that demographic. I had previously worked with Common and he was on board and then one of our executive producers suggested Jeffrey.”
Coburn said Courtney B. Vance became connected to the project through scholar David Levering Lewis, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies on Du Bois. Viola Davis later joined after Jeffrey Wright reached out to her.
“Viola, I read her book ‘Finding Me,’ I knew she’s the exact person Du Bois would have wanted to help,” Coburn said. “She’s the exact person who struggled up to become a Talented 10th. And Jeffrey was the one who reached out to Viola and that’s that.”
The Many Sides Of W.E.B. Du Bois
The documentary does not present Du Bois as a flat historical figure. Instead, it focuses on his many layers, including his genius, his stubbornness, his isolation and the personal costs that came with a lifetime of public struggle.
Born free in the North, Du Bois traveled throughout the country and came face to face with the ways racism shaped everyday life in America. His experiences in places such as Atlanta helped sharpen his understanding of how deeply racism was built into institutions, politics, culture and opportunity.
The film also follows Du Bois through his conflicts with major figures of his time, including Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey and President Woodrow Wilson. It traces his academic rise, his interest in imaginative and futuristic writing, and his evolution from the Reconstruction era through the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Du Bois died in 1963 on the eve of the March on Washington, a moment that gave his passing symbolic meaning as a new generation carried forward the fight he had spent his life defining.
A Film About Truth, Growth And Black Journalism
Coburn said working with Du Bois’ books, speeches, essays and newsletters changed her as a filmmaker and as a person.
“I grew, and I think that’s the difference when you go and watch a narrative film like ‘Wakanda Forever,’ there’s some basis in these films that are true,” she said. “When you come to a documentary, you’re trying to find the truth, and the truth changes you.”
Coburn said Du Bois’ refusal to be confined by his era helped her think more expansively about her own work.
“He was not confined to his time,” she said. “Du Bois had beef with these Black men, like Booker T. Washington, but he also had beef with seven presidents and he went right for them, because he understood that he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
The documentary also highlights Du Bois’ influence on journalism and media. At a time when Black Americans were often misrepresented or ignored by mainstream outlets, Du Bois used newsletters, magazines, essays and research to tell Black communities what they needed to know from a voice rooted in truth and liberation.
“His words have weight,” Coburn said. “I think that we’re in that same space today where media, good journalism and people finding the truth and telling the truth as widely as possible is how we all get to know that anything happened.”
She added that shutting down truthful journalism creates an “insular society that is for some and not for everybody.”
“This was a Renaissance man who was using all the tools he could use, fiction, nonfiction essays, historical data driven research to fight for his people,” Coburn said.
Beyond The “Talented Tenth”
Du Bois is often remembered through the phrase “Talented Tenth,” a concept tied to the idea of an educated Black class helping lead the broader community. Coburn said the documentary attempts to move beyond a narrow reading of that phrase and show Du Bois as a more complicated thinker whose ultimate fight was about humanity.
“We need to expand on that argument,” Coburn said. “I think that’s kind of where we are today, still trying to figure out how we share power in this country, and how it becomes more fair to Black people, to brown people, to poor people. How does it become fair? I don’t think we’ve answered that question.”
The film also looks at Du Bois’ personal life, including the strain his public mission placed on his first marriage and his relationship with his daughter. Coburn said she did not try to hide the parts of Du Bois that may be difficult for modern audiences to sit with.
“I didn’t tell anything that Du Bois didn’t tell on himself,” she said. “He wrote it in the book. If he didn’t write it, I wouldn’t have it.”
For Coburn, showing Du Bois as both an icon and a flawed human being was necessary to telling the story honestly.
“We have to understand that in the middle of being this intellectual, this icon, or this cultural figure, he was also just a human being,” she said.
She added that telling the full story of a man who lived 95 years in only two hours meant making difficult choices.
“What I tried to do with this film was to let him be the person that he was, and even that is a point of failure when you have two hours for somebody that lived 95 years; you start at a point of failure, and you just do the best that you can.”
“W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause” premieres May 19 on PBS at 9 p.m. ET. Viewers should check local listings.
