Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lewis to address the Class of 2003

David Levering Lewis, the double Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of historian W.E.B. Du Bois, will address the Class of 2003 at Wheaton's 168th commencement on May 17, 2003.

Lewis won a Pulitzer Prizes for each of his two-volume biographies ("W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, Volume I"; "W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963") tracing the life of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois--activist, historian, scholar, sociologist, co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the leading proponent of the civil rights movement--until his death at age 95. Lewis has also been the recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for his work.

Lewis was educated at Fisk University in Tennessee. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1985, he joined the faculty at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he has taught courses on African-American history, the civil rights revolution, the literature of racism, global imperialism and world civilization. In addition to his two-volume biography of Du Bois, he has authored several acclaimed books, including "King: A Biography," "When Harlem Was in Vogue" and "The Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble for Africa."

Lewis is married to Wheaton trustee and alumna Ruth Ann Stewart '63, a research professor at the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University.