The U.S. Department of Education was fighting off a social media storm Sunday after the agency misspelled the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, an admired civil rights activist and co-founder of the NAACP, in a tweet about the importance of education for Black History month.

The department tweeted out a famous Du Bois quote, “Education must simply not teach work- it must teach life,” but then attributed it to W.E.B. DeBois.

A Twitter backlash quickly followed. The agency corrected the mistake and issued an apology.

“Our deepest apologies for the earlier typo,” the agency tweeted out

Then it sent out a new tweet with the same quote, but Du Bois spelled correctly. You can still see the tweet on the U.S. Department of Education Twitter page.

The error comes just a few days after new and controversial Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence casting a tie-breaking vote to get her confirmed.

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A native of Columbus and a fine arts graduate of Clark Atlanta, Amy Sherald was chosen as the official portrait artist of former first lady Michelle Obama. On the same week that the portrait was unveiled at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, it was also announced that Sherald was awarded the High Museum's 2018 David C. Driskell Prize. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Credit: Andrew Harnik