Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), the inventor of dynamite, was a chemist, engineer, businessman and, most memorably, philanthropist; he was also a scholar, fluent in Russian, French, English and German. Above all, he loved poetry.
Elaine went to NYU, completed her education at North Adams State and became a teacher. She taught third grade at Bryant Elementary School in Great Barrington. She went back to school and earned her M.Ed. at North Adams State.
To date, Clinton Church Restoration has raised just over half of the $100,000 needed to purchase the building and cover initial operating costs. The organization is under contract to purchase the decommissioned church with a deadline of Friday, March 31, to complete the transaction.
The benefit concert for the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church will feature 12 short performances by student vocalists and musicians including members of Simon’s Rock’s chorus and jazz concert and a performer from the annual gospel concert.
At a young age he worked at the former Betros Market. For many years he worked at the Rising Paper Company and A.I.E.R. Economic Research as a driver and general maintenance.
“Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working everyday? They are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen. And it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.”
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, in a speech to Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, just before his assassination.
NAACP leader and author James Weldon Johnson wrote “God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse,” in a little cabin off Alford Road on the Alford Brook and at the Mason Library.
The circa 1870s building will in some way be transformed into a place to honor the area’s African American history. Friends of A.M.E. Zion had collected or been promised around $30,000, and needs a total of $100,000 to buy the building.
