Du Bois event will draw many
GREAT BARRINGTON — Randy Weinstein thought he’d be lucky to get 80 people at his weekend event honoring the late W.E.B Du Bois, which includes songs, lectures and discussion, and a celebration of the new Du Bois Center of American History and Culture. He now has 200 reservations for the Saturday program at St. James Episcopal Church at 4:30 p.m. and the reception at the Du Bois Center. The attendees range from Pulitzer-prize winning academics to college students and from local residents to educators interested in the life and times of Du Bois, the civil rights activist, scholar and native of Great Barrington.
A crew from the C-SPAN cable channel is attending and will broadcast the event, Weinstein said.
“I had anticipated 80 or less and planned to have this at the center, and the thing began to snowball and I had to move it to St. James Church,” said Weinstein. “It looks like there will be about 80 people from the academic world alone.”
The owner of North Star Books at 684 South Main St., Weinstein has taken over an empty space adjacent to his rare book store, invested $50,000 of his own money, and created a destination for anyone interested in the life of Du Bois.
Weinstein has gathered a collection of 2,000 books and letters, by and about Du Bois, on the topics of black history, civil rights and race relation issues that stretch back to this country’s founding fathers.
Since the center quietly opened a couple of months ago, about 200 people have visited after hearing about it through word of mouth as well as publicity and outreach to universities and administrators in local schools, Weinstein said.
Academic attendees are coming from New York University, Columbia University, Simon’s Rock College, Tufts University, Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts, to name a few.
It’s the most expansive tribute to Du Bois in his home town, adjacent to the Mahaiwe Cemetery, where Weinstein has been escorting visitors to the grave sites of Du Bois’ wife, son and uncles.
Du Bois himself, born in 1868, was buried in 1963 in Ghana, where he settled after joining the Communist Party, which he later renounced. He was a graduate of Harvard University, a prolific writer and his letters reflect a strong attachment to the environment of his hometown.
John Y. Simon, a history professor at Southern Illinois University, is flying in; David Levering Lewis, whose biography of Du Bois won a Pulitzer prize, will attend; and David W. Blight at Yale University, who edited Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk,” will attend as well. They are all on the new center’s advisory board.
Simon, who has published the 28-volume “Papers of Ulysses S. Grant,” said in a telephone interview yesterday that Du Bois is under-appreciated as an early civil-rights activist.
“I think in part it’s because we’ve decided to focus on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the great leader of the people, and as the person who achieved a measure of racial justice,” said Simon. “Du Bois is like John the Baptist, who came before, preached his cause and inspired many people, including Dr. King.
“Du Bois has also been out of favor because he joined the Communist Party and lived in a degree of exile,” Simon continued.
“He joined the American Communist Party in 1961. And, in a letter, he described Communism as viable third-party option, so this was not the Russian Communist Party, he was still thinking America,” said Weinstein.
Simon said racial justice issues stretch far back in this country, and that Ulysses S. Grant was another predecessor of Du Bois’ activism. Grant released a slave he owned in Missouri, and later accepted black troops into his army during the Civil War.
