For All the Saints: George Freeman Bragg, W. E. B. Du Bois

On the Episcopal calendar, George Freeman Bragg and W. E. B. Du Bois are honored today. Bragg (1863-1940) was the twelfth African American ordained as a priest in that denomination. He worked as a journalist, was priest at a Baltimore congregation for nearly fifty years, worked to hire African American teachers in city schools, helped found a black orphanage, worked to encourage African American congregations, and wrote a number of books.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was an author, editor, civil rights activist, and was a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. He wrote several books, worked to end lynching, Jim Crow laws and discrimination, and organized Pan-African congresses to support people of color around the world.