After decades of controversy over its most famous native son, the Town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is officially celebrating the life and legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois on the 150th anniversary of his birth. One of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century and the father of the modern civil rights movement, Du Bois had a lifelong attachment to this place, where, he wrote, “I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation.” He wrote often of his early life in Great Barrington and returned here to bury his first wife and two children in the town’s Mahawie Cemetary.
Great Barrington’s 150th celebration of Dr. Du Bois’ birth is being marked by dozens of events over many months and includes talks by nationally known scholars, musical tributes and the unveiling of murals created in his honor by local youth.
A calendar of events can be found at the special festival site DuBois150th.com.
The celebration on Du Bois’ actual birthday, February 23, included afternoon keynotes from Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Levering Lewis and former NAACP president Cornell William Brooks, who also shared his message about the lessons Du Bois offers contemporary activists in a Boston Globe article, as well as a dance performance and a musical tribute by jazz trombonist Craig Harris.
Whitney Battle-Baptiste, associate professor of Anthropology and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst emceed that night’s sold-out celebration 
at the historic Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. The evening featured remarks from Du Bois’ great-grandson Jeffrey Alan Peck and Professor Edmund W. Gordon, a close friend of Dr. Du Bois, a musical tribute from blues musician Guy Davis, whose parents Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were also friends of Du Bois, and a compelling, hip-hop-inspired overview of Du Bois’ legacy by Professor Reiland Rebaka. Battle Baptiste shared some of Great Barrington’s history with its most famous native son in her essay, Bringing Du Bois Home to Great Barrington.
Learn more about Dr. Du Bois life and legacy in the Berkshire Eagle’s 24-page supplement Du Bois from A-Z, and from Rev. Jamal Calloway’s talk, The Enduring Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois, which was hosted by the Great Barrington Historical Society, and filmed by CTSB-TV at Searles Castle where Du Bois worked as a teenager.