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| Volume I, Issue 5--26 January 2005 Building DemocracyW.E.B. Dubois grew up here in Great Barrington and learned about democracy in the town hall we can see from our office windows. He sledded down the hill outside on snowy January days, like the today, I imagine, a hundred years ago:
This photo was taken from high up Castle Street, showing the view Du Bois would have seen as he set off down the hill. David Levinson, who cofounded Berkshire Publishing, is working ona book-length history of the Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Great Barrington. The church was founded by local Black citizens and recent arrivals from the south in the 1860s. W. E. B. Du Bois was involved in the church as a teenager and wrote a great deal about it in newspaper columns. The church has been the center of the Black community in southern Berkshire County for nearly 150 years. It members were active in the Civil Rights Movement and its current pastor has been a leader in the movement to recognize and honor Du Bois in his hometown. Du Bois has been controversial here in recent months after a movement began to name a new school after him--quite reasonably, as he is the most eminent graduate of this school district, one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century, and also someone who dearly loved the town and region. There was considerable resistance on the part of the School Committe (on which I once served) and no support from local officials. After a number of stormy meetings, the Committee chose instead to name the school "Muddy Brook." Lingering memories of the Cold War (Du Bois became a Communist in his 80s), or racism? The Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History is "A masterful title that weaves together the social, scientific, anthropological, and geographical influences on world history, this set will be the benchmark against which future history encyclopedias are compared..belongs on the shelves of all high-school, public, and academic libraries. In short: buy it. Now. " Booklist, January 2005 Prepublication price expires at the end of January. Buy now to save $75 (see below). Democracy building is in the news, given the military incursions by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq and the U.S. mission to create democratic nations everywhere. The United States was hailed for helping create stable democracies in Japan and West Germany following World War II. Its more recent efforts, however, have been widely criticized by other nations whose citizens see Americans as occupiers rather than as liberators. But democracy-building begins at home. Scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in his autobiography how learned about democracy as a teenager in his hometown of Great Barrington in the 1870s and 1880s. His comments also remind us that battles over school budgets have probably taken place ever since public schools were first founded. Here's what Du Bois wrote: "From early years, I attended the town meeting every Spring and in the upper front room in that little red brick Town Hall, fronted by a Roman "victory" commemorating the Civil War. [If we had a webcam, you could see this from our offices!]I listened to the citizens discuss things about which I knew and had opinions: streets and bridges and schools, and particularly the high school, an institution comparatively new. We had in the town several picturesque hermits, usually retrograde Americans of old families. There was Crosby, the gunsmith who lived in a lovely dale with brook, waterfall and water wheel. He was a frightful apparition but we boys often ventured to visit him. Particularly there was Baretown Beebe, who came from forest fastnesses which I never penetrated. He was a particularly dirty, ragged, fat old man, who used to come down regularly from his rocks and woods and denounce high school education and expense. "I was 13 or 14 years of age and a student in the small high school with two teachers and perhaps 25 pupils. The high school was not too popular in this rural part of New England and received from the town a much too small appropriation. But the thing that exasperated me was that every Spring at Town Meeting, which I religiously attended, this huge, ragged old man came down from the hills and for an hour or more reviled the high school and demanded its discontinuance. "I remember distinctly how furious I used to get at the stolid town folk, who sat and listened to him. He was nothing and nobody. Yet the town heard him gravely because he was a citizen and property-holder on a small scale and when he was through, they calmly voted the usual funds for the high school. Gradually as I grew up, I began to see that this was the essence of democracy: listening to the other man's opinion and then voting your own, honestly and intelligently. " (Du Bois, W. E. B. (1968). The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: International Publishers, pp. 91-92.) Berkshire Publishing Group has included articles on Du Bois in a number of recent publications: "Democracy, Constitutional" and "Du Bois, W. E. B." in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History - see below for link to free article from the encyclopedia! "Democracy" and "Town Meeting" in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Community "Du Bois, W. E. B." in the Encyclopedia of Leadership Each takes a somewhat different perspective, looking at Du Bois's thinking and influencel in relation to these major subjects. Read the article on "Du Bois, W.E.B." and World History.
Booklist Starred Review and Editors’ Choice selection Ordering the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History
Prepublication price expires at the end of January, only four days from now! Save $50 by ordering this week. Between natural and human disasters (such as war), thinking globally often isn’t as much fun as we’d like it to be. But this comment by a London friend did make us laugh: "What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun?---How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender." For more, take a look at Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror : Observations and Denunciations by a Founding Member of Monty Python. (We've included a link to Amazon here for your convenience, but are also enthusiastic supporters of community and independent booksellers (just as librarians, we know, want to support independent publishers). |
"For recreation we played games: "marbles," hi-spy," "duck on a rock," and "Indians." We went mountain climbing and explored caves. We swam, and coasted the long hill from far up Castle Street, across the railroad tracks down to Main Street. Most of the children used to skate; but not I for two reasons: skates cost too much, and mother was afraid of the water." (Du Bois, W. E. B. (1968). The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: International Publishers, pp. 85.)
“A masterful title that weaves together the social, scientific, anthropological, and geographical influences on world history, this set will be the benchmark against which future history encyclopedias are compared.----Though attempting to cover as broad a subject as world history in five volumes seems impossible, the editors and their contributors have pulled the feat off with aplomb. No article runs more than approximately 10 pages, but each captures the essence of the topic being addressed as well as the distinct style of the contributor----. As McNeill states in his preface, the title is 'designed to help both beginners and experts to sample the best contemporary efforts to make sense of the human past by connecting particular and local histories with larger patterns of world history.' The encyclopedia succeeds admirably and belongs on the shelves of all high-school, public, and academic libraries. In short: buy it. Now.” 
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