Interview, Ernest Dubois

Ernest Dubois (b. 1926) was born in Rochester, New York, and graduated from East High School in 1944. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and history from the University of Rochester in 1948. During college, Dubois worked at Bausch and Lomb and was one of the company’s first black employees. He went on to earn a master’s degree in education and in 1951, got a job teaching in the Rochester City School District. Dubois worked in the Administrative Training Program for Lincoln First Bank from 1963 to 1975, and then returned to teaching at the School Without Walls. He was active in local community groups, including FIGHT (Freedom, Integration, God, Honor, Today), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Urban League.

In this interview, Dubois discusses the importance of education and expresses impatience with people who do not take full advantage of the opportunities presented to them. He notes that there is a great deal of work to be done to improve life for Rochester’s black community and reports that he is a passionate community activist, despite not having personally experienced the discrimination felt by so many other African Americans in the city.