Great Barrington to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day
The town last week became the sixth in the state to officially replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day, celebrated on the second Monday of every October. On Sept. 23, Select Board members signed a proclamation that made the change, and will, in future, coincide with events and celebrations to honor the indigenous people of […]
A legacy of greatness: Community celebrates W.E.B. Du Bois’ 151st birthday
It’s now officially an annual event. The festival honoring the birthday of the town’s most famous resident is in its second year. “Great Barrington has done in the last year what it took us 75 to 80 years to get around to — which is to really warmly welcome W.E.B Du Bois back home,” Selectman […]
New W. E. B. Du Bois exhibit highlights a Berkshires-grown ‘global citizen’
It reads like a who’s who of American history. The list of important people W. E. B. Du Bois corresponded with includes presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, German novelist Thomas Mann, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, American novelist William Faulkner and perhaps the most famous scientist of all time, Albert Einstein. […]
Tracing the steps of civil rights giants: Du Bois Legacy Festival honors King
Like an arrow, Martin Luther King Jr.’s urgings are still piercing human souls and stirring the question of how to harness the power to make the world more just. Love demanding justice, and justice demanding love, to paraphrase the civil rights leader, 51 years after he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. Click here to read […]
In Great Barrington, interfaith community celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘dream’
It may have been one of the most bitterly cold days in memory, but the oppressive weather could not extinguish the warmth and hope South County residents felt on the occasion of what would have been the 90th birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. About 70 people turned out Monday at the First Congregational […]
Du Bois and MLK: United in struggle
W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington in 1868, just five years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves and supposedly guaranteed equality for African-Americans. By 1956, 88 years had passed since that proclamation and Mr. Du Bois can be forgiven for bristling at the suggestion of Southern novelist William Faulkner that the […]
As festival again honors Du Bois, ‘controversial’ exhibit on display
On April 15, 1956, radio broadcaster Sidney Roger sent a telegram to Southern novelist William Faulkner, telling him that W.E.B. Du Bois was challenging him to a debate about civil rights in the wake of the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till and the acquittal of his suspected killers by a white jury in Mississippi. Faulkner […]
