Born from the ashes of slavery and Jim Crow, the documentary W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause chronicles the extraordinary life of the pioneering scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. As the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, Du Bois emerged as a fierce intellectual warrior, challenging the accommodationist stance of Booker T. Washington and demanding full civil rights and higher education for Black Americans. The film traces his journey from co-founding the NAACP to his controversial embrace of Pan-Africanism and his eventual self-exile in Ghana. Through archival footage and poignant interviews narrated by Jeffrey Wright and Courtney B. Vance, with reflections from Common, the documentary paints a nuanced portrait of a man who was both revered and reviled. Blending historical context with intimate personal details, director Rita Coburn Whack crafts a compelling narrative about a revolutionary thinker whose radical ideas about race, justice, and global liberation remain profoundly relevant today.