W.E.B. Dubois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples. Through Dubois's research and many worldly travels, he developed a fairly deep appreciation for socialism as an economic system. He believed the communism and socialism provided African-Americans with the best possible opportunity for equality and economic opportunity. Dubois felt this way since the early days of the NAACP but his trips to the Soviet Union solidified this position.
The problem with this socialist position in the late 1940's was that it was very unpopular to the American public. It was also unpopular with the government as the FBI was investigating communist organizations around the country. The United States was in the early stages of an ideological and political war known as the Cold War. This Cold War was fought against the Soviet Union and socialism/communism in general. The NAACP felt that it needed to distance itself from communist and socialist rhetoric or risk losing its valuable funding from the American public. It also risked becoming a target of FBI agitation. For this reason, DuBois and the NAACP parted ways in 1948.
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