Great Barrington — It was a historic day for the town as hundreds of people honored W.E.B. Du Bois at the event to unveil his sculpture at Mason Public Library on Saturday, July 19.
Du Bois was born in Great Barrington on February 23, 1868, and was a historian, sociologist, and civil rights activist with global influence. He was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and was also the editor of the NAACP’s journal, The Crisis.
The Du Bois Sculpture Project group formed in May 2022 to fundraise for a sculpture, along with choosing and hiring a sculptor. The idea of the sculpture came from resident Freke Vuijst, who died in September 2020. As part of the project to install a sculpture, marble benches, stairs, and railings have been installed at the entrance of the Mason Public Library, along with the statue of Du Bois.
After a selection process, in August 2023, the group chose Pennsylvania-based sculptor Richard Blake to design the sculpture of Du Bois.
The sculpture was unveiled at the event by Du Bois’ great-grandson Jeffrey Alan Peck, who is on the board of directors for the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation. The goal of the foundation is to build a museum based on Du Bois’ legacy and his teachings by 2028 in Accra, Ghana, where he died in 1963.
“When I first came to this town in 2014, I had no idea that I would fall in love with it and all the people in it, and that it would mean so much to me now,” Peck said at the event. “When I travel around the world, the first thing that I bring light to is this town where Du Bois first opened his eyes.”
Peck read a written statement from his brother Arthur McFarlane II, who could not attend the event. “Grandpa’s journey to world-changing greatness began right here in this small town, far from the distant places he would eventually visit and change,” McFarlane II wrote. “This town should be proud of his role in making him the man he would become, giving him strength and the perseverance that would become the hallmarks of success. He also called this small town home. It is fitting that he sits here and welcomes visitors and townsfolk to a light and place of knowledge, the home of books and a sanctuary of truth.”
“The significance of this event is that we need to uplift my great-grandfather’s radical commitment to justice,” Peck told the audience. “We should be inspired by his courage at a time like this. What [made] Du Bois rare then and now is that he courageously represented his convictions. In the spirit of Du Bois, may we model the same kind of courage as he did.”
Peck proceeded to read a quote from Du Bois right before he unveiled the sculpture, which was taken from the speech “On the Future of the American Negro”: “We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.”
Former Gov. Deval Patrick was one of the many speakers at the event. “About 25 years ago, when I first settled in the Berkshires with my wife, her sister asked me, after her first long visit here, ‘Where are all the Black people?’” Patrick said. “I remember my answer, and I’m reminded of it especially now. The answer, as it always has been, is that we are everywhere. I think it’s important to make that point right now in these times when so many people are being made to feel like we are outsiders, like we don’t belong, like we have no history and no place. That’s not what a community is [all about].”
Patrick said that he is proud to be a member of the community “in part because we understand that we don’t have to hide from our history to love our country or to love our community.” “It feels to me that it is so fitting that this extraordinary sculpture should be placed in front of a library,” he said. “For those of us old enough to remember books, a library was a community’s repository for books. I think Du Bois understood, as we need to be reminded of today, that data and information is not the same thing as knowledge, and knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. This statue here is an invitation for us all to seek wisdom and to do that humbly. To seek it and see it in each other, to listen for it in the folks who agree with us and the ones who don’t, and the folks we know and the ones we think we know. But if we stop for just a minute, we realize we don’t know a damn thing, and asking an honest and humble question is how we discover the magic and the light that lives in all of us.”
“As I look into this crowd, I can’t help but to reflect,” State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District) told the audience. “The path to this day was not easy. It took years of vision, partnership, and persistence because, in this country, the road to honoring people of color is often long and never without resistance. But this community stayed the course. We stayed committed because remembrance takes time, justice takes time, and progress takes all of us.”
Davis said that the statue affirms that “Dr. Du Bois belongs here and not at the margins of history, but at its very center, including the center of our town, the center of our memory, and the center of who we are.” “This monument doesn’t just honor a man, it holds a mirror up and asks us, ‘Who are we? And who do we want to become?’” Davis said. “It tells every child, especially every child of color, that they belong, that their story matters, and greatness can rise from this very soil of a small town, from a community that came together to lift one of its own, just as it did for me and my three children. That is the power of community. That is the power of us.”
