With all the talk of red states and blue states and regional politics, we live in a time where we often view anything not connected to us as “other.” But, oddly, at least in the Eastern United States, we have been connected across the 40th parallel by a single mountain range—the Appalachians—that has served for eons as a path not just for the hikers we see along Route 7 in the Berkshires, but by the flora and fauna that have travelled this same pathway.
In a news release, Clinton Church Restoration said the New York City-based firm, headed by architect Mario Gooden, "is one of the few African-American architectural firms in the country."
Michelle Robinson Obama was born, in her words, “a black working class girl” at a time when her hardworking father, tending boilers for the city of Chicago, provided a cramped apartment on the second floor of “a tidy brick bungalow” owned by her mother’s aunt on the South Side of Chicago. There, she and her brother and parents lived in a space meant for two.
Solos, duets, trios and multitudes crackled with electricity, improvisation, shouts and whispers of the legacies of their and our tap forebears, and at the same time protecting and insulating us.
While based in the White House, Ryan has covered the last four presidents. She is one of the longest serving members of the White House Press Corps and is the only African-American to have reported daily from the White House for over 20 years.
All wanted to transform Clinton Church into a community gathering place that would preserve its history, honor civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois, and retain enough space for performances and other events.
In their letter to the editor, Wray and Cora Gunn write: “It is an important piece of architecture, but it is so much more. It has been the political and spiritual home of Great Barrington's Black community for over 130 years.”
The concept of an auction to get the fundraising rolling salted some deep historic wounds when one African-American attendee felt the auction process harkened back to the auction blocks of slavery.
Monument parent Linda Shafiroff said, while she thought the threat was “deplorable,” both students had been engaging in insults that highlighted racial tensions at the school as well as national political divides and cultural differences.
Great Barrington native and African-American author, scholar and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois attended the church as a child. The church is registered as an important site on the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail and on the National Register of Historic Places.
Research and cures for sickle cell disease have been underfunded as attention and wealth floods into other conditions, but this may change with the work and passion of local physician John Horan and grant writer Ruth Dinerman.
Investigating officers concluded that the “verbal altercation...allegedly involving racist comments between two high school students...did not rise to a physical level.”
“There are bigots and racists in the world, but Monument doesn’t have to be the way the world is out there...we can influence our community by the way we treat others and ourselves.”
--- Student Senate President Teddy Michaels
