W E B Du Bois National Historic Site

07/21/2020

Due to Covid-19 and adherence to Commonwealth mandates, the 2020 tour season is cancelled. However, we are working on providing a virtual tour and resources for you to enjoy. Please stay tuned for updates.

08/18/2017

It does not make any difference what the Ku Klux Klan was {is} fighting for or against. Its method is wrong and dangerous and uncivilized...it was {is} the duty of all these people [who oppose] to join together in solemn phalanx against a {the} method which is an {the} eternal menace to human culture. -"The Shape of Fear" ca. June 1926

Link to full document: http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b208-i038

Typed draft of article published in the North American Review, discussing race relations and commenting on the Ku Klux Klan.

07/28/2017

Du Bois (pictured 2nd row, 2nd from right) and James Weldon Johnson marching down Fifth Avenue in New York City in the Silent Parade to protest lynchings in the United States.

NAACP Silent March to Protest Lynching - 1917, NYC

07/28/2017

Google commemorates the Centennial of the Silent Parade

100th Anniversary of the Silent Parade

07/16/2017

This summer, our tour guide is experimenting with brief videos from the site. Feel free to like, comment, or share.

07/05/2016

For the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, African American activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois led the creation of over 60 charts, graphs, and maps that visualized data on the state of bl…

09/12/2015

No man today has a right to describe himself as liberal or radical who refuses to face the problem of black folk and colored people; who proposes to reform the world for the benefit of white people on the tacit assumption that other folk are not human in the same sense that white people are human - "Liberals, Radicals, and the Negro" ca. 1930

08/28/2015

It is...imperative that the colored people of the world, and the first of all those of Negro descent, should begin to concentrate upon this problem of their economic survival, the best of their brains and education. Pan-Africa means intellectual understanding and cooperation among all groups of Negro descent in order to bring about at the earliest possible time the industrial and spiritual emancipation of the Negro peoples - "Pan Africa and New Racial Philosophy," Crisis 40 (November 1933)

08/21/2015

Town police had brought in machine guns from Hartford and kept them in the Town Hall basement, just in case violence erupted. Ted Hitchcock said an FBI agent hid in his attic — his house was encircled by the U-shaped park — with binoculars trained on the proceedings.

08/21/2015

We at the W.E.B. Du Bois National Historic Site mourn the passing of a truly great American, Julian Bond. He substantially changed the course of U.S. history through his work to enhance the political and civil rights for African Americans, and thereby for all citizens. We are particularly sad at his passing because of his connection to W.E.B. Du Bois, and especially to the W.E.B. Du Bois Homesite. Dr. Du Bois was a friend of Mr. Bond's father, the educator Horace Mann Bond, and there is a photograph of the very young Julian holding Dr. Du Bois's hand that you can find on the internet, for instance at https://theberkshireedge.com/julian-bond-and-w-e-b-du-bois/. Among Mr. Bond's many other accomplishments and contributions he served as Chairman of the Board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1998-2010 and was a member of the Board at the time of his death, an organization with which W.E.B. Du Bois had a famously formative, supportive and disputative relationship well before Mr. Bond's time on the Board. And, Mr. Bond has played important roles in the creation of the W.E.B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington. He served as the keynote speaker at the contentious dedication ceremony organized by Mr. Walter Wilson and Dr. Edmund Gordon at the Homesite in October of 1969. A 10 minute movie is curated in the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers in the Special Collections and University Archives of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It includes an extensive excerpt from Mr. Bond's speech, in which he trenchantly analyzes the social injustices of the 1960s, an analysis that in sadly too many ways holds true for today. You can view the movie at http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b246-i001 or http://bit.ly/1KvQd8T.
And more recently, Mr. Bond and his wife, Pam Horowitz, have supported the W.E.B. Du National Historic Site as members of the Niagara Circle, support for which we are very grateful.

We are all better for what Mr. Bond helped foster in our world. We will miss his astute political analyses, his organizational acumen, and his personal style.

Civil rights activist Julian Bond died August 15, at the age of 75. In 1969, he delivered the keynote speech at the dedication of the W.E.B. Du Bois homesite in Great Barrington.

08/20/2015

Once I remonstrated with a colored teacher of literature for attending the "Jim Crow" section of a theater in the top balcony. She answered: "Where else can I see Shakespeare? I cannot afford to go to New York." - Autobiography, 1968