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Welcome to www.TheReminder.com archive for past articles!/Features/Pg 2 Feature Stories/Du Bois’ life, message celebrated by play
Du Bois’ life, message celebrated by play Date: 2/12/2015 SPRINGFIELD – The first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, scholar, writer, and activist, W.E.B. Du Bois had his roots in Western Massachusetts and a connection to Springfield.
Brooks Fitch, a Springfield native who is the former director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts, is once again staging a tribute to Du Bois in Springfield.
“Springfield provided a real strong catalyst as he moved out in the world,” Fitch explained to Reminder Publications. Fitch added Du Bois was very interested in the Western Massachusetts abolitionist connection as John Brown lived in the city as a wool merchant.
Du Bois’ papers are at the University of Massachusetts Amherst library, which is named after him.
On Feb. 22 at 3 p.m. the play about Du Bois, “A Man for All Times,” will be performed by the Pulse Ensemble Theater of New York City at St. John’s Congregational Church, 45 Hancock St. The performance is free and open to the public. The play will also be performed at Central High School.
On Feb. 23, at 4 p.m. Davis Levering Lewis will present the 21st annual Du Bois lecture at the Student Union Ballroom at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The lecture is also free and open to the public.
Fitch said Du Bois was born and grew up in Great Barrington. He was an orphan and living in New England presented “limiting factors.” Du Bois’ life, though, showed that he was not interested in limiting himself.
The life and works of Du Bois, Fitch said, represent “a tremendous platform for a message of responsibility.” Du Bois wrote a series of articles and book about African American rights and taught at several universities.
Fitch explained that Du Bois clashed philosophically with African American leader Booker T. Washington in that Du Bois advocated that African-Americans should not have to compromise, but insist on full civil rights and representation in the government.
Du Bois insisted the African Americans should not be passive in light of injustice and in reaction to the practice of lynching wrote, “Knowledge is not enough. We must act.”
Fitch believes that shining a light on Du Bois young people will see him as a source for “aspirational modeling.”
The location of St. John’s is appropriate for the play as Du Bois attended a Congregational Church in Great Barrington, which collected donations to pay for his tuition to Fisk University, Fitch explained.
Du Bois died in 1963 at the age of 95 and did not live to see the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Du Bois wrote in 1897, “Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: How does it feel to be a problem? One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
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