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.
War in the 18th century was not in foreign lands, but on the settlers’ doorsteps. It brought death, and Stockbridge had little with which to fight affliction except prayer.
It was, in fact, the perfect introduction to the story of a woman who asked a simple question: Did the Sheffield Resolves, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts include her?
I am still interested in the documentaries from war-torn areas of our globe and dramas of family strife, but there also needs to be some relief — some comic relief — and I think this festival successfully provides both.
We do not know how MumBet looked as a child or young woman. We do not know what she sounded like or what her posture, her gait and her gestures were like. Can we determine it at a distance of 300 years?
"Mumbet" is the inspirational true story of a woman who could neither read nor write, but whose simple eloquence poses the question of America’s purpose better than anyone. Mumbet was the first enslaved African-American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts
Some historians dismiss the Sheffield Resolves; others call them the first American Declaration of Independence. In either case, in just seven days, who wrote this impressive document?
There are five sections on the poster: birth and childhood, familial ties, civil rights activism, a return to Great Barrington, and lasting impact. Photographs and captions accompany each section and there is a scannable QR code to learn more about Du Bois.
In its 127 pages containing 150 profiles, and references to many more South Berkshire residents, past and present, the answers to who we are may surprise you.
While Agrippa Hull was safe from slavery in Stockbridge, he lived much too close to the New York border. Slavery was legal in New York and kidnappers were common. They came across the state line, grabbed Black men, women and children in Massachusetts, and sold them in New York.
