Great Barrington — More than 60 years after the death of William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois, the eighth annual Du Bois Legacy Festival celebrated the life and legacy of its namesake at various locations throughout Berkshire County on Thursday, February 20; Saturday, February 21; and Sunday, February 22.
Born in Great Barrington on February 23, 1868, Dr. Du Bois was a civil rights activist, historian, and sociologist and was the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the editor of the NAACP’s journal, The Crisis.
In February 2021, the town declared Du Bois’ birthday as a municipal holiday. The annual festival is organized by Great Barrington’s W.E.B. Du Bois Legacy Committee.
This year’s festival included a dinner at Multicultural BRIDGE (Berkshire Resources for Integration of Diverse Groups and Education) on February 20; a “Freedom Moves: Embodying the Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois” dance workshop at First Congregational Church and a reception for the Du Bois Freedom Center on February 22; and Du Bois Legacy Day with events held at the Macedonia Baptist Church, the Mason Library, and Ventfort Hall on February 23.
Multicultural BRIDGE founder and CEO Gwendolyn VanSant is also the vice chair of the town’s W.E.B. Du Bois Legacy Committee. “Du Bois was brilliant for his time, and he really clearly saw the problems with our systems in this country,” VanSant told The Berkshire Edge. “He gave advice, and he kept trying to teach and educate by leading with a vision of how we could do things better. That still inspires us now because we’re still struggling with many of the same problems in this country that he was dealing with during his time.”
VanSant emphasized Du Bois’ belief in the brilliance and excellence of Black people. “I think that our country needs to stop stomping out Black history and instead embrace it and be grateful for what our race has done for this country,” VanSant said. “We have to fight for education for all, because I think that a lot of the hate and problems in this world are due to people of all backgrounds having been intentionally miseducated.”
The festival featured special guest from all over the country, including: Los Angeles, Calif.-based musician and producer Khalil Sullivan; from Atlanta, Ga., scholarist, television producer, and professor Dr. Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin; from Austin, Texas, choreographer and dancer Gesel Mason; and from Denver, Colo., currently residing in Brooklyn, N.Y., choreographer and dancer Roxanne Young.
Both Sullivan and Kootin are working on the musical “At Buffalo.” The story takes place during the 1901 Word’s Fair in Buffalo, N.Y. At the World’s Fair, W.E.B. Du Bois presented “The American Negro” exhibit. “The exhibit was previously at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, where it won many awards,” Sullivan explained. “It was funded by the federal government, and it was brought over to the Buffalo World’s Fair in 1901.”
Sullivan said that the musical, which is still under development, prominently features Du Bois and tells the story of why he co-created the exhibit. “We’ve been working on this for over 15 years now,” Sullivan said. “We’ve been figuring the story out, and writing songs in order to make a musical.”
“We wanted to bring this important history to the stage, because the stage is a beautiful and magical space when it comes to bringing people to share space and time,” Kootin said. “It’s a space where people can experience life through the art form of storytelling. The stage can be a wonderful space for imagination and creativity, but it also brings an immediacy to history.”
Du Bois co-created the exhibit with his Fisk University roommate Thomas Calloway. “They created this exhibit in response to what America was doing in a very violent way to its own Black citizens, which was creating an entire environment of mob violence, including daily lynchings that were happening in the country,” Kootin said. “They felt an urgent and desperate need to stop this crisis, and in order to do that they felt the need for people to understand the humanity, the real lives, and the real stories of Black people. They said that the way they could do that was to go to the biggest stage of all at the time, which was at the World’s Fairs. This was all a moment in time when Du Bois is undertaking international work on making people understand Black people’s humanity. It speaks to the legacy that he was creating while he was still alive for the people that needed it.”
Both Kootin and Sullivan toured historical locations during the festival, including Du Bois’ gravesite, and the Du Bois Freedom Center, formally the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church, which, according to the Center, “was a formative influence in the life of W. E. B. Du Bois.”
On February 22, Mason, Young, and Kootin all led the “Freedom Moves” workshop at the First Congregational Church.
Participants in the workshop were all asked to think about questions like “Who would you be and what would you do if you were completely free?”
Participants also took turns in developing greetings in the form of motions and dances with one another.
Mason, who previously served as an artist in residence at Jacob’s Pillow, developed a project called “Yes, And.” “The project celebrates this idea of what it means to actually be free,” Mason said. “It centers around Black women and what a Black woman would do if they had nothing to worry about. [Kootin] is a friend of mine, and we wanted to find a way to bring Du Bois’ legacy into the present through arts, dance, and music.”
“When it comes to Du Bois, I feel like there has been a lot of his legacy that has been lost in the textbooks of today’s world,” Young said. “There is so much more that needs to be said of his legacy in order for people to fully get his ideas and concepts.”
Mason explained that Great Barrington is central to Du Bois’ story and the history of Black America. “If we can go back to tell the truth of history, that will shape our understanding of how we want to move through the world,” Mason said. “So often, I feel like you can get a version of a story that feels like, in some ways, it can separate us. But people have to be open, to have their minds changed, to have their minds shift in order to feel connections. I feel like what we need right now is a willingness to be vulnerable, to be open, and to learn something about ourselves through engaging with history. To me, history is not just learning about it and checking it off in a book, but examining what it feels like. History is bigger than a historical marker.”
NAACP Berkshires President Dennis Powell was one of the many attendees at the “Freedom Moves” workshop. “What goes through my mind when I think about Du Bois’ legacy? He was a leader that inspired me,” Powell said. “Like Frederick Douglass and Fannie Lou Hamer, I draw my strength from what they all did. During their time, they all suffered more hardship than I have ever suffered or ever will suffer.”
Powell said that NAACP Berkshires created the W.E.B Du Bois Award to recognize those who have positively reflected Du Bois’ legacy. “We give this award out in order to help keep Du Bois’ name alive,” Powell said. “In 2019, I took dirt from the Du Bois cemetery in Great Barrington and water from Housatonic over to Ghana.” Du Bois spent the last years of his life in Ghana. “When I went to Ghana, it was the first time in my life where I was in an environment where the color of my skin was not considered a weapon,” Powell said. “It was accepted, appreciated, cherished, and respected.”
During the workshop, Powell was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Honoring the past and inspiring the future,” and included photos of multiple civil rights leaders from throughout history, including Du Bois. “The best way we can honor the past and inspire the future is by not repeating the past,” Powell said. “What we are trying to do now in our country is to repeat the past, and we need people who can prevent it. It is only we the people who can stop the nonsense that is going on in our country. In our nation, it is all up to we the people in every state. Our country is not Walmart, and we ain’t rolling back nothing. We are not rolling back history, and that’s how we can appreciate and respect those that came before us by making sure we don’t end up back where we started.”
