In a Berkshires schoolhouse, a sudden knowledge of bigotry
Marker at the site of the long demolished house in Great Barrington, Mass., where W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963) spent his early childhood.
Great Barrington, in the Berkshires, is the birthplace of W.E.B. DuBois, — co-founder of the NAACP; editor of its journal; author of The Souls of Black Folk, as well as founding works of black history, sociology and political theory; essayist; novelist, and civil-rights campaigner.
From The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”:
“It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards–ten cents a package–and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, — some way.’’
- From L.R. Burleigh
The lovely downtown of Great Barrington in the spring. There are lots of nice restaurants and art galleries..
— Photo by Anc516
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