>> We have reduced in our culture W E B du boys to some sound bites.

That's Peabody and Emmy Award-winning director writer and producer Reader Coburn.

>> On the legacy of pioneering civil rights activist and sociologist W E B Dubois in her new documentary, Coburn tells the story of how trips to Europe, the lynching of a young black man in Georgia and another civil rights icon all played a role in shaping W E B boys into a giant of American history.

Here's a peek.

>> A very early got the idea.

>> I was going to prove to the world that need grows.

With just like other people.

>> The review the boys is arguably the greatest black intellectual scholar, activist in American history.

>> The first African-American to receive a PhD from Harvard.

He's one of the most educated men.

>> the country, not black men.

>> Joining us to discuss documentary is filmmaker Rita Coburn.

She's a Harvey native, Northwestern grad and producer of TV content right here in Chicago for Oprah and our own W T Tw among others.

Welcome back.

good to see you.

Congrats on the Thank you.

this is an expansive two-hour documentary about the boys.

And you have said that his life has often been, quote, reduced to sound bites.

Remind us of W E B du Voices role in history and the parts of the story that you really wanted to bring to light in this film.

I thought it was important to be expansive about this man.

>> Who helped start the Niagara Movement co-founded the NAACP, but it really grew up in great Barrington in born in 18, 68 3 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, but not hampered by the rest of the blacks for the most part in the South who were digging their way out of him slave Mont.

He had had generations of being free is that was in his family and in his DNA he took this massive intellect that he had and used it to go for civil rights for blacks and for other people as well who were marginalized.

>> So he was the first black person to earn a PhD from Harvard University, considered a pioneer of American.

You know, scientific sociology.

Tell us how he leveraged research and academics to highlight racial injustice, something that nobody else was doing at the time.

>> Well, he studied sociology in Berlin at a time when it was not known that that was going to be academic study in the United States and he began to put empirical data together.

And of course, because we're in Chicago, a lot of us know about Chicago, the great metropolis, which done by Horace, Kate and but prior to that, the very first time that people went door to door and gather data and research about black people WITH-WITH W E B to poise when he did that for Philadelphia.

But he also that was a through line through all his work was the systematic gathering of data to prove his point about black people in society.

>> One event that particularly impacted him was the lynching of Sam Hose in Georgia.

After that incident, the boys wrote, quote, One could not be called cool and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved.

Tell us about that incident, how it impacted him.

You are so exactly right.

I think here's where.

>> W E B du Boyce is a scientists.

He's been to Berlin.

He's he's he's been to Hartford.

He spent a But now what he has to do is realize that he is now a black man in the south and that black men in the south are lynch dismembered, burned and that stuck with him in a way that it wouldn't for people who were who knew that this was happening on a regular basis and that changed him from saying I can't think of this as the study.

I now have to be calm.

A journalist.

I have to be calm and activists and it changed his life >> analyzing to boys is psyche and thought processes.

That's, you know, sort of a through line for you in the documentary.

There is a clip here explaining concept from his book, The Souls of Black Folk about how black people grapple with a split identity.

Here it is.

>> It's a peculiar sensation.

It's double consciousness.

The sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.

Of measuring one sold by the tape of world that looks on used contempt.

>> To >> Whatever feels his An American.

A. To Seoul's 2 thoughts to an reconciled striving >> was it?

it important for you to explore him as a person but also his mind?

Is that a goal for you in this film?

>> Thank you for Absolutely.

Was in the way that I was able to do that, we call that breaking the story.

At what point do I reach a breaking point that the common person who Patton study him would understand him that people who knew him would find out that they knew something different and he's deceased and many people are not alive.

That knew him.

But what I found out was through his 21 books.

We could tell who he was through his writings.

So we were able to take quotes from that and allow readers like Jeffrey Wright in Common.

And Courtney Vance to read his words and that's how we get an idea of his inner thoughts.

And you call it breaking the story in filmmaking.

Very different from what we call it in Daily News.

It all right.

Thank The story yesterday to use is for that.

>> Before we run out of time, I want because this is a very interesting part of black history in American history.

The documentary also details his relationship with Booker T Washington, another civil rights icon and prominent leader in the African-American community in the late 18 90's, early 20th century.

>> Dubois disagreed with Washington support for, you know, for a strategy of accommodation raise on.

Tell us a little bit about that.

>> I think that what you have is a changing of the guard.

You have people growing up.

You have people having more freedoms and you happen.

Man, Booker, t Washington who was enslaved until he 6 years old and then you have a man who is free and younger and who has been around the world and he's reading and study in the Constitution and a point he says it's time to move on.

I initially agreed with you, but I don't think we have to do that.

And I think that to voice its ability to redefine himself to disagree with president sits well as black leaders taking no prisoners it's one of the things that makes him a rep 20 seconds left.

What do you want people to take away from this film?

That this was a person who was just a human being.

He's going bring all his good all his bat out in this documentary.

But his bottom line was to help black people in particular and all marginalized people understand their worth, OK?

Rita Coburn, thank you so much for joining us.

Congrats.

Thank you.

course.

And you can watch W E B du Boys rebel with a cause right here on W T Tw it premieres at 08:00PM on Tuesday May 19th.

So mark your calendar.

>> We're back right after this.