A bronze sculpture of W.E.B. Du Bois now sits on a marble bench outside the library in Great Barrington.
Strategically and symbolically, organizers who brought the post Civil War scholar back to his home town left plenty of room for others to sit by him, hoping the public will consider how Du Bois dedicated his life to the cause of fighting racism and inequality.
Over several hours on Saturday, hundreds turned out for the statue's unveiling, including its artist Richard Blake.
The program included musical performance, spoken word and dance, along with speeches from former Mass. Governor Deval Patrick, and state Representative Leigh Davis.
Many consider the tribute a long overdue recognition of Du Bois — from the town where he was born in 1868 just a few years after the end of the Civil War.
Several area activists and others spoke about Du Bois's vision, connecting it to current matters of race and equity in the U.S.
After thanking so many who were involved in getting to this moment, Du Bois's great-grandson, Jeffrey Alan Peck quoted from one of Du Bois's many essays.
"We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires, but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiencies of public schools, by the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books," Peck read, from "The Future of the American Negro," published in 1953.
He also shared a note from his brother who wasn't able to attend the dedication.
Their great grandfather visited places all over the world, Arthur McFarlane II wrote, but he called Great Barrington home
"So it's fitting," Peck said reading the letter, "that he sit here and welcome visitors and town folk alike to a place of knowledge, home of books and a sanctuary of truth."
The significance of the statue Peck said, is to uplift his great-grandfather’s commitment to justice, and to inspire others to do likewise.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 3, 1868 in Great Barrington. His early years as a scholar took him first to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, then to Harvard where he became the first Black man to earn a PhD, despite the fact that his qualifications for Fisk were disregarded and his time in Cambridge was "blighted by race-based exclusion and prejudice," according to the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
As a scholar, Du Bois helped invent the field of sociology, as an activist he helped found the NAACP and as a writer he penned some of the "finest works of prose to come out of America in the Twentieth Century, including The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction," the Center said.
Du Bois became a global figure and convener of Pan African Congresses. His efforts eventually brought him into conflict with the U.S. Justice Department, during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s. He was put on trial but acquitted.
Nevertheless, he chose to leave the U.S., the center said, and emigrated to Ghana, where he spent the rest of his life. He died at the age of 95, on the eve of the March on Washington, in 1963.
