On this day, February 23, 1868, civil rights activist, author and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois was born.

Du Bois was a public supporter of the effort to save Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He spoke at the "Save the Rosenbergs Rally" (1952) in NYC and read a prayer at their funeral after efforts to stop the execution proved unsuccessful.

The young sons of the Rosenbergs, Robert and Michael, met their soon-to-be adoptive parents, Abel and Anne Meeropol, for the first time at a holiday party thrown by the Du Bois’s in their Brooklyn brownstone in December of 1953.