Born in Massachusetts in 1868, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the founders, in 1909, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Under his leadership, five Pan-African Congresses were held, in 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945. Du Bois believed that Blacks around the world should engage in a worldwide struggle to free themselves from oppression. The immediate postwar years of 1946 to 1948 witnessed the growth of vibrant African American groups seeking ways for their grievances to be addressed by the Truman administration. In May 1946 the National Negro Congress took the first initiative when the historian Herbert Aptheker was employed to write a petition outlining the political, social, and economic oppression African Americans faced domestically, in the hope that the United Nations would address the petition.