Background on Du Bois Family Collection
The Du Bois Family Collection encompasses the family of W. E. B. Du Bois, primarily his granddaughter Yolande Du Bois Williams Irvin, herself an educator and proponent of civil rights. Focusing more on daily life, the collection outlines the family's education, careers, and personal lives both in context of and as separate as relatives of W. E. B. Du Bois.
Born in 1932 to Nina Yolande Du Bois and Arnette Williams, Yolande Du Bois Williams was introduced to social thought at an early age. Her childhood was spent in various cities, including Harlem, New York; Gill, Massachusetts; and Baltimore, Maryland. The only grandchild of W. E. B. Du Bois, she spent considerable time with him and frequently attended conferences throughout her youth. One particular conference she attended, the International Youth Conference in Germany, served as an inspiration for her to pursue education as a career and emphasized the importance of travel in understanding the world.
Throughout her time at university, she worked to promote children's mental health, particularly teenage girls. Du Bois studied psychology at Fisk University in Tennessee before transferring to New York University, earning her bachelors. She obtained both her Masters and Ph.D. in psychology at University of Colorado, Boulder. As part of her work, she was involved with and held office in organizations such as Corpus Christi YWCA, Nueces County Mental Health Center, Coastal Bend Governmental Organizations, Mary McLeod Bethune Day Nursery Center, and Dos Mundos, among other institutions. She also held office in organizations dedicated to mental health. Her first "real-world" experience teaching came as being a teaching assistant for psychology courses at the University of Colorado. In 1988 she moved to Xavier University in Louisiana, becoming faculty of the school's psychology department. She was awarded the "Best Teacher Award" in 1989, just one year after beginning her career.
Along with teaching, Du Bois was a frequent orator, delivering lectures across the United States regarding African American history, civil rights, feminism, and the work of her grandfather. In 1993 and 2000, she participated in David Levering Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois through interviews. Other documentaries and biographies have also featured her, emphasizing her connection with her grandfather and the similarities in academic values that they each held.
Du Bois continued to work at Xavier University until 2005, when Hurricane Katrina sparked her move to Colorado, where she remained until her passing in 2021 at age 89. She had five children (Nina Carol Irvin, Arthur Edward McFarlane, II, Mark Adam Peck, Jeffrey Alan Peck, Sr., and Andre’ Peck), six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren at her time of death.
