Where is the boyhood homesite of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois?
(The pronunciation of Du Bois in his own words, “My name is pronounced in the clear English fashion: Du, with u as in Sue; Bois, as oi in voice. The accent is on the second syllable.”). The daughter of a local farming family, Mary Silvina Burghardt met a young man who had just arrived in the Great Barrington area from Albany. The Haitian-born Alfred Du Bois took Mary Burghardt as his wife on February 5, 1867, in the village of Housatonic. The marriage was short-lived, however it was long enough to produce an offspring who would shake the human parameters of societal belief systems and challenge the ethos of a nation as well as laying the foundation of human rights around the world. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in 1868 on Church Street, Great Barrington. No physical structure remains of his home, however, a marker commemorating the site was dedicated by The Great Barrington Historical Society in May, 1994. The marker reads, “I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of
