Washington died in 1915. DuBois continued to be an important voice of reform in the African American community for many years. He was joined, and sometimes opposed, by other dynamic African American civil rights leaders who tackled a variety of race-related issues and shaped reform policies during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a former slave who played a role in the formation of the NAACP, campaigned tirelessly for laws to prevent lynching—a practice that led to the deaths of thousands of innocent blacks in the South (and many in the North as well)—during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Marcus Garvey offered a challenge to the NAACP's drive to break down the barriers of segregation and fully integrate American society. Garvey, a native of Jamaica, born in 1887, advocated the...