The deportation of Marcus Garvey in 1927 and the depression that followed effectively ended the influence of the Universal Negro Improvement Association as a broadly based black nationalist organization. But it did not signal the end of black nationalist sentiment in the United States. W.E.B. DuBois was a member of the Socialist party and a leader of the movement for Pan- Africanism, an attempt at the political unification of Africa in an effort to free the continent from colonialism. On the domestic front DuBois was forced to resign his position with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization he helped to establish, because of his nationalist position. As editor of the Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP, DuBois published an article in 1934 in which he took the position that Afro-Americans should organize themselves to obtain economic and social power “no matter how much segregation it involves.” In this essay he made the distinction between voluntary separation for survival and imposed segregation. Although DuBois had been a bitter opponent of Garvey, he remained a leader with strong black nationalist convictions.

As a founding member of the NAACP, DuBois had championed the cause of integration and full equality for blacks. At the same time, he recognized the peculiar status of Afro-Americans in the United States.