News and Events
Fall 2012
Exhibit: Pride and Passion: The African American Baseball Experience, Du Bois Library, Lower Level
“Pride and Passion: The African American Baseball Experience” tells the story of black baseball players in the U.S. over the past century and a half. Although many blacks played baseball with whites in the nineteenth century as amateurs and also played on minor league teams through the 1880s, black players were not allowed to compete with whites when major league baseball was created in the mid-1890s. To counter this discrimination, they organized teams made up entirely of black players and formed leagues that were known collectively as the Negro Leagues.
Summer 2012
UMass Amherst Archeology Field School, Department of Anthropology, Du Bois Homesite, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
July 11-August 17
The Department of Anthropology offers a six-week summer field school program based on the introduction to the practice of archaeological heritage at the W.E.B. Du Bois homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The program offers in-depth study and training in historic settlement analysis, including survey strategy, subsurface sampling procedures, artifact analysis, public interpretation, archival research, community engagement, artifact analysis, and computer applications. These skills have many applications, including cultural resource management, historic preservation, and as a step towards more heritage and advanced archaeological education and research. For more information, contact Whitney Battle Baptiste at wbbaptiste@anthro.umass.edu.
UMass Amherst Black Alumni Reunion
April 13-15
The UMass Amherst Black Alumni Network, the Alumni Association, and CMASS (Center for Multicultural Advancement and Student Success) are hosting a reunion weekend packed with social, cultural, academic, and career events, in conjunction with Black Out Weekend. For registration and information, contact UMass Amherst Alumni Association, 800-456-UMASS, alumni@admin.umass.edu.
Spring 2012
The Soul of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Tribute to the Black Church
Sunday, February 26, 2012, 3:00 p.m.
St. John’s Church, 643 Union Street, Springfield, MA
St. John’s Congregational Church (Springfield, Mass.), in collaboration with The W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst Libraries, host the 2nd Annual “The Soul of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Tribute to the Black Church.” The high-energy program will feature inspirational songs, poetic expressions, and other tributes to the Western Massachusetts native. Admission is free.
This marks the second year of the partnership between St. John’s and The W.E.B. Du Bois Center. The purpose of the partnership between the two organizations is to: (1) establish an annual event to promote the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois, its relevance to the modern Black Church and its impact on future generations; (2) build awareness of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center and its available resources; and (3) engage other strategic partners to accomplish relevant goals and objectives.
The historic St. John’s Congregational Church is one of the oldest and most active Black Churches in New England. This year, St. John’s is celebrating the 168th anniversary of its founding in 1844 by anti-slave protestors. Currently the congregation claims more than 1,500 members. The partnership with the Du Bois Center and UMass Amherst is a continuation of the church’s rich history of positive community influence by its pastors, members, and ministries. Throughout St. John’s history, it has maintained relationships with nationally known human rights advocates. Abraham Lincoln knew one of the founding members of the church personally. Other honored guests and visitors to the church have included Sojourner Truth, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Jesse Jackson and Deval Patrick.
Contact: Brooks Fitch, W.E.B. Du Bois Center, UMass Amherst Libraries; 214-616-3438, duboisfriends@library.umass.edu
18th Annual Du Bois Birthday Lecture
"Ideas Have Consequences: The Radical Pedagogy of W.E.B. Du Bois"
Thursday, February 23, 2012, 4:30-6 pm, Cape Cod Lounge
Keynote speaker: Derrick Alridge, professor and historian at the University of Virginia
The UMass Amherst Libraries will host the 18th Annual Du Bois Lecture on Thursday, February 23, 2012, at 4:30 pm, in the Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union, at UMass Amherst. Derrick P. Alridge will give a talk, “Ideas Have Consequences: The Radical Pedagogy of W.E.B. Du Bois.” The same talk will be given that day at 10:30 am at St. John’s Congregational Church, 643 Union Street, Springfield, Massachusetts. Dr. Alridge will explore Du Bois’s many meanings of pedagogy and offer a genealogy of Du Bois’s ideas about a variety of issues faced by black Americans during the 20th century. Refreshments will be served. The event is open to the public.
Derrick P. Alridge, an educational and intellectual historian, is Professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Previously, he served as Professor of Education and African American Studies and Director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia.
Alridge has published The Educational Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Intellectual History; Message in the Music: Hip Hop, History, and Pedagogy (an edited volume with James B. Stewart and V.P. Franklin); and numerous articles in the fields of history, education, and African American Studies.
Alridge also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of African American History and is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Currently, he is writing The Hip Hop Mind: An Intellectual History of the Social Consciousness of a Generation and conducting research on the role of education and schooling in the civil rights movement.
Alridge will join a prominent group of scholars as the Du Bois lecturer, which include David Levering Lewis, Herbert Aptheker, John Bracey, Clayborne Carson, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Arnold Rampersad, and Bettina Aptheker, to name a few.
The event is sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the UMass Amherst Libraries. For more information, contact Rob Cox (rscox@library.umass.edu, 413-545-6842).
Fall 2011 Events
Libraries Celebrate the Launch of Credo
We celebrated the launch of Credo, our new online repository of digital materials from Special Collections and University Archives that features the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, with a star-studded program bookended by remarks from Chancellor Emeritus Randolph Bromery, who is responsible for UMass Amherst’s acquisition of the Du Bois papers, and Afro-American Studies Professor William Strickland, who for many years directly oversaw the collection. Amilcar Shabazz, chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois African American Studies Department, demonstrated a search on Credo. Scholars, authors, and librarians praised the ability to look more broadly, deeply, and efficiently for the many telling connections and cross sections in Du Bois life and letters, thanks to Credo: http://credo.library.umass.edu/.
Du Bois, Black Feminist Archaeology & the Veil of Black Womanhood
Assistant professor of Anthropology Whitney Battle-Baptiste gave a talk on gender, race and class and the development of Du Boisian archaeology. She also read from and signed copies of her new book, Black Feminist Archaeology.
Whitney Battle-Baptiste is an historical archaeologist of African and Cherokee descent, she has done fieldwork at Colonial Williamsburg, the Hermitage, the W.E.B. Du Bois homestead, and other sites. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin and conducts research on plantations in the U.S. Southeast, the materiality of contemporary African American popular culture, and Black Feminist theory and its implications for archaeology. Battle-Baptiste will be directing the Archaeology Field School at the Du Bois homesite in the summer of 2012.
Winners of Du Bois Fellowships Gave Talks
Markeysha Davis, of the Afro-American Studies Department at UMass Amherst, gave a talk “Daring Propaganda for the Beauty of the Human Mind: Redefinition and Reaffirmation of the Black Self in Poetry and Drama of the 1960s and 1970s.” Rickey Fayne, of the English Department at Northwestern University, gave a talk “The Will to Achieve: Philosophy and Psychology in Service of Social Action in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Pan-African American Consciousness.”
Spring 2011 Events
17th Annual Du Bois Lecture
“W.E.B. Du Bois: Personal Stories/Political Reflections,” a talk by Bettina Aptheker
Monday, February 28, 2011, 4:30 p.m. , Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union
Bettina Aptheker is Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies and History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
An activist, author, feminist, and professor, Bettina Aptheker, PhD, has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for more than 30 years. Her most recent book is a memoir, Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech and Became a Feminist Rebel (2006). It contains many stories of her early friendship with W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois.
Dr. Aptheker's other books include The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis (1976; 2nd edition, 1999); Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History (1982); and Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience (1989). She is the biographer of Shirley Graham Du Bois for Notable American Women , and is currently writing a critical essay on Shirley Graham Du Bois' creative career as an opera composer, playwright, biographer, and novelist. She is also at work on a major research project: “Queering the History of the American Left: 1940s-1980s.”
Watch video
The Soul of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Tribute to the Black Church
Sunday, February 27, 2011 • 3:00 pm
St. John's Congregational Church, 643 Union Street, Springfield, MA
We celebrated a new partnership between The Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst Libraries and St. John's Congregational Church with an afternoon of gospel, dance, drama, and oratory by St. John's choirs and UMass Amherst students and faculty.
From the UMass Amherst Theater and Dance Department, Janeae Warren and Magda Compere performed “The Riddle of The Sphinx,” a poem by W.E.B. Du Bois. On saxophone, Gilbert McCauley and Richenond Fadre performed “In the Tradition,” by Amiri Baraka, and Paul Denis performed “Hard Time Blues.” Watch news video
Tenth Annual W.E.B. Du Bois Birthday Celebration
February 19, 2011
Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church, 9 Elm Court, Great Barrington, MA
The Du Bois Center invited the public to celebrate the tenth annual W.E.B. Du Bois Birthday Celebration with the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church and Friends of the Du Bois Homesite. The celebration featured the Women of Faith Choir of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield.
The annual Du Bois Birthday celebration at Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church was instituted in 2001 by the late Rev. Esther Dozier. Great Barrington-born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois attended Clinton A. M. E. Zion Society meetings as a young boy and wrote articles about the Church for the New YorkGlobe and the Freeman. Dr. Du Bois was a co-founder of the NAACP and the founder and guiding force of the Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, from 1910-1934. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance and is widely considered to be the father of Pan Africanism.
Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst Libraries Announces Partnership with St. John’s Congregational Church
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - A five-year partnership agreement signed on February 7, 2011, by the UMass Amherst Libraries will provide St. John’s Congregational Church with new educational and cultural resources while building awareness of the Libraries’ W.E.B. Du Bois Center.
The partnership’s ambitious plans include promotion of the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois’s work in relation to the black church, engagement of Springfield K-12 students in cultural and educational opportunities, and development of an international educational component to bring together Du Bois scholars and black church leaders from around the globe.
“The partnership between the Du Bois Center and St. John’s Congregational Church is a strategic alliance to further the goals of the church and the center and to continue the legacy of Dr. Du Bois in the areas of excellence, knowledge, leadership, and community enrichment,” said Brooks Fitch of the Du Bois Center. “We believe St. John’s is the perfect partner because of its rich history of spiritual and community leadership.” Read more and watch video
Connecting Point
Brooks Fitch was interviewed on “Connecting Point” about his work with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission on its Plan for Progress and the Development of the Knowledge Corridor Initiative. Watch video
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