This survey of a portion of Great Barrington’s rich catalogue of historic buildings was a significant undertaking for the Historical Commission. It provides the town with the first of a series of reports that provide documentation of sites worthy of preserving and those potentially eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
He plans to deal with the issues of slavery and racism head-on, yet in a creative and, for whites, comfortable manner.
Visitors are invited to explore the history of African-Americans in the Berkshires through compelling, contemporary stories from today as recorded by leaders from the local African-American community and the NAACP Berkshire chapter.
On the musical agenda was “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the NAACP anthem written by Great Barrington resident James Weldon Johnson.
The celebration for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was also the kick-off for a series of townwide events commemorating the 150th birthday of civil rights pioneer and author W.E.B Du Bois who was born in Great Barrington. Included in the article is a video of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.
This weekend Camille A. Brown and Dancers take to the stage at the Ted Shawn Theatre to present ‘BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play,’ a piece whose introspective approach to cultural themes through visceral movement and sociopolitical dialogues will not disappoint.
“A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced.”
— James Weldon Johnson
“Du Bois was not just a scholar, but a black man who loved his people, who loved all people, and who advocated for their social justice. He speaks to us now. Inspires us now. And compels us now … to stand up for what is right.”
— Cornell Williams Brooks, NAACP president, speaking at Bard College of Simon’s Rock
“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.
Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, D–Lenox, worked with the Department of Children and Families’ central office to secure a truck and company to deliver toys from Boston to the departments Pittsfield office on Thursday.
Johnson wrote lyrics to 200 popular songs, including the “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” while he was, in addition, a lawyer, diplomat and early civil rights leader. He wrote many of his songs in a writing cabin on Alford Road in Great Barrington.
What a month it’s been! In just the past couple of weeks, the Pope made a passionate argument underscoring the need for humans to respect not only other humans, but other species and all life on Earth, while the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of all Americans, no matter their sexual orientation, to civil
“I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell.”
— NAACP pamphlet from 1916
By this babbling Berkshire brook/ideas would flow with heavenly Grace/pen to paper for eternity.
Weep not angels for we listened to James.
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