Commemorating 15O Years of WEB DuBois


It’s difficult to forget the good ideas of a good man.

I want to commend The Berkshire Eagle for publishing the special pullout commemorating the 150th anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’s birth. This tribute speaks not only to the enduring relevance of Du Bois’s ideas but also to the thoughtful consciousness of those involved in its creation. Your commemoration reminds us that human-centered ideas have a way of breaking through—even when efforts are made to suppress them.

My awareness of Du Bois’s work has grown steadily over the past 12 years, ever since I moved to the Berkshires. One source of this growth has been walking through the southern Berkshires and encountering the memorials erected in his honor. One such memorial—a mural that has since been removed—traced Du Bois’s roots in Great Barrington and the threads of his ideas that resonate in the lives and legacies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. Though the mural no longer exists, its message endures.

W.E.B. Du Bois Mural – Great Barrington, photographed August 20, 2010, by C.A.R. Adams.

My understanding has also deepened through my discipline of sociology, where scholarship on Du Bois has expanded significantly over the past two decades. Increasingly, scholars recognize that Du Bois’s work at Atlanta University laid the foundation for the first American sociological research center. In that time, I’ve watched Du Bois move from a footnote in introductory sociology textbooks to being rightly acknowledged as one of the founders of American sociology.

Du Bois argued for the centrality of race in understanding society—a perspective that remains profoundly relevant. The events of the last century, and the early decades of this one, continue to affirm the power of sociological inquiry and the enduring salience of his ideas.



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