Great Barrington — The Berkshire Hills Regional School District has announced that Dr. David Levering Lewis, scholar and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning W. E. B. Du Bois biographer, will inaugurate the W. E. B. Du Bois Educational Series on Thursday, April 28, at 7 p.m. at Monument Mountain Regional High School (MMRHS). Students from MMRHS and Pittsfield High School will open the evening by reciting passages from Du Bois’ work, using their voices to speak his words once again. Dr. Levering Lewis will then give the keynote presentation, “W. E. B. Du Bois’s Long Road Back to Great Barrington.” An exhibit on loan from W. E. B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst, highlighting the life and works of Dr. Du Bois, will be on display in the high school’s lobby prior to the presentation. The event is free and open to the public.

A historian and the author of eight books, Dr. Levering Lewis taught at the University of Ghana, Morgan State University, the University of Notre Dame, Howard University, and the University of the District of Columbia before joining Rutgers University in 1985. While at Rutgers Levering Lewis wrote his widely acclaimed two-volume biography of Du Bois, “W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919“ (Owl Books 1994), winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Biography; and “W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963” (Owl Books 2001), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He joined New York University in 2003, where he is currently the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus. Noted among his other works are “King: A Critical Biography” and “When Harlem Was in Vogue.”
The Educational Series honors Du Bois, recognized as the “premier architect of the civil rights movement in America,” who was born and raised in Great Barrington and graduated from Great Barrington High School in 1884. The series will present two major public programs per year and will also feature smaller student forums. In the spirit of Du Bois, the series is intended to heighten awareness of racism, modern slavery, gender and economic inequality, and other injustices. The series programs and forums will engage and inspire students and others through real-life focused, interactive presentations using a variety of mediums including lecture, film, and music. The first student forum took place in early March, when MMRHS hosted filmmaker Kathleen Foster who presented her new documentary on racial profiling and police brutality, “Profiled.”
The planning committee for the series is comprised of local Du Bois scholar Dr. Homer “Skip” Meade; Du Bois Center Director Randy Weinstein; Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon; Monument Mountain Regional High School Principal Marianne Young; NAACP-Berkshire County Branch members Tommie Hutto-Blake (also a member of the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series) and Roberta McCulloch-Dews; Multicultural BRIDGE staff member Jeff Lowenstein; Berkshire Hills Regional School District School Committee Member Bill Fields; and parent John Horan, who coordinates the planning committee; The series is meant to complement the work being done by other groups including the Du Bois Center, the W. E. B. Du Bois National Historic Site, the Du Bois Lecture Series at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, the NAACP, Multicultural BRIDGE, the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series, the University of Massachusetts W.E.B. Du Bois Library; and the University of Massachusetts Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.