In new PBS documentary, the complexities and legend of W.E.B. Du Bois come to life
TheGrio...
‘Rebel With A Cause’ chronicles the life and times of Du Bois, amplified with dramatic retellings by Common, Jeffrey Wright, and Courtney B. Vance, with Viola Davis as narrator.
The voice of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, or more simply, W.E.B. Du Bois feels omnipresent, even some 60 years after his death. As an author and orator who had a hand in everything from the evolution of print journalism to theater and more, Du Bois’ passion for creativity, freedom, and more for Black men, women, and children made him one of history’s exemplary voices.
There’s also a complexity to the man that is central to Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director and writer Rita Coburn’s new documentary about one of the godfathers of Black consciousness. Her film, “W.E.B. DuBois: Rebel With A Cause,” chronicles Du Bois’ near one hundred years of life, told through dramatic retellings by Common, Courtney B. Vance, Jeffrey Wright and narration from Viola Davis. The two-hour documentary highlights how history repeats itself, including the need for Du Bois’ works and voice.
Although Coburn had Du Bois’ spirit in mind since she began work on the film in 2022, the civil rights titan became the ideal lure to draw a figurative all-star team of narrators for the project, all of whom believed it was a cultural duty to participate.
“My idea was to initially get contemporary voices to read his writing,” Coburn tells theGrio in an exclusive interview. “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.”
“Courtney B. Vance had contacted the scholar David Levering Lewis, who won two Pulitzers for his biographies on Du Bois and Lewis vouched for him. They’re both Harvard men, so it was kind of organic. And Viola, I read her book “Finding Me,” I knew she’s the exact person Du Bois would have wanted to help. 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 multitudes of Du Bois
The film also captures the complexities of Du Bois, both personally and professionally. Born a free man in the North, the scholar and enthused sociologist and Pan-Africanist advocate for civil rights had traveled across the country, only to encounter racism and how it was structured into everyday life, whether it be in the South in cities such as Atlanta or even in his feuds with Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey and betrayal from Woodrow Wilson. The film chronicles his rise in academia, his flirtation with Afro-futurism in his writings, and his evolution from Reconstruction through the 1960s.
Du Bois died on the eve of the March on Washington in 1963, his death being a figurative passing of the torch to those in attendance. As a throughline, Coburn’s film not only explores the heights of DuBois as a creative but also his isolation and the toll it took on him as he fought for the betterment of his country, only to be deemed an enemy of it.
In her years of work on the project, incorporating Du Bois’ books, speeches and newsletters, Coburn says she changed “several times.”
“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 says. “When you come to a documentary, you’re trying to find the truth, and the truth changes you. And that elevated me. It helped me to think I can do it anyway. I can be more about it because he was not confined to his time.”
“[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. He was expansive, and that teaches me to try to continue to expand as a person.”
Du Bois’ place in history also highlights his influence on modern journalism and variety. As he was present during the investment into Hollywood thanks to the White House screening of “Birth of a Nation,” the author would create newsletters and magazines with the specific idea of informing Black Americans of the news they needed to know from a voice who had grown to become a standard bearer.
“His words have weight,” Coburn says. “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. If you start to shut that down, then what you’re doing is you’re building 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.”
Du Bois’ ultimate fight was about humanity, and not being reduced to a “sound byte.” It’s something that Coburn finds an issue with in terms of the general perception of the man and how the “Talented 10th” label is how people think of Du Bois without looking further. The term, despite its ties to an educated Black class informing others, is often seen as a classification that centers on elitism and classism, something Colbun hopes her film pushes back on.
“We need to expand on that argument,” she explains concerning the ‘Talented 10th.” “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.”
“Rebel With A Pause” also examines Du Bois’ home life and how his duty to his work more often than not put a strain on his first marriage and his relationship with his daughter. Coburn didn’t hide anything that would today be culturally frowned upon in his actions, largely because he himself didn’t hide his feelings.
“I didn’t tell anything that Du Bois didn’t tell on himself,” she says with a laugh. “He wrote it in the book. If he didn’t write it, I wouldn’t have it. And he, it, these were difficult things. 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 added, “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 Pause” premieres on May 19 on PBS at 9 p.m. ET. Check local listings.