W E B Du Bois Homesite - Great Barrington, MA, USA
N 42° 10.655 W 073° 23.603
18T E 632686 N 4670742
This waymark is for the the homesite of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor.
Waymark Code: WM13FBV
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 11/29/2020
Views: 0
The homesite of W E B Dubois is located SW on route 23 from Great Barrington's town center. It is a grove with informational displays about his life and legacy and a cutout of the location of his birth home (which was razed in 1954). His birthsite is located in the town center. Here is some info on his life.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, MA, home to a small African American community, some of whom fought in the famous all Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. His encounters with these veterans helped to shape his perspectives.
When he was 17, he left home to study as Fisk University, then Berlin and in 1895 he was the first African American to graduate from Havard with a PhD.
He began writing, and published several works including 'The Suppression of the African Slave Trade', 'The Philadelphia Negro', and 'The Souls of Black Folk.' He founded several organizations, including the NAACP, the Niagara Movement, and the Pan-African Congresses.
His desire was that the world would be without human exploitation and equality for all, and the struggle for equality of Black Americans was part of the larger global struggle. During the reactionary McCarthy era, his ideas were threatening to some and he was falsely accured of being an agent of a foreign power (was exonerated.).
At the age of 93, he moved to Ghana at the invitation of President Nkrumah. He passed away 2 years later and was honored with a state funeral in Accra, Ghana. At the historic Civil Rights March in Washington DC (where Dr. Martin Luther King intoned "I have a dream"), Roy Wilkins, leader of the NAACP, proclaimed to the 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial: “At the dawn of the 20th century his was the voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause.” His voice was that of W E B DuBois.
Paraphrased from (
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Coordinates are for the parking area. Please explore - this is a very cool place and you will learn something!
On a personal note: When I first visited here, it was to find a letterbox. I also took some photos At the time I was oblivious to the legacy of W E B DuBois, but I found the site educational and I wanted to learn about his legacy.