Du Bois explicitly abandoned his own earlier belief that Black accomplishment dismantles prejudice

Evidence

Bolstered by this support, Du Bois swung back at the critics who believed that assimilation and “accomplishment by Negroes [could] break down prejudice.” “This is fable,” Du Bois thundered in the April 1934 Crisis. “I once believed it passionately. It may become true in 250 or 1,000 years. Now it is not true.” Du Bois never again seriously promoted uplift suasion. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 874

Categorization

• QUESTION: Du Bois himself confesses he once believed uplift suasion worked — a real case of a giant figure changed by the very causal reversal Kendi argues for. Is this the strongest evidence yet that ideas (belief in uplift) can precede and be overturned by policy-driven reality?
• XREF: This is the central test case for the reader’s project: a prominent thinker who actually reversed from assimilationist to a racial-separatist position, offering a template for what honest reassessment looks like.