Events
“Monument to Love” in Great Barrington
A bronze sculpture in honor of the great legacy of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and created by the famous artist/sculptor Richard Blake, was unveiled Saturday, July 19, 2025, in Great Barrington, Mass, the site of the scholar’s birth (in 1868).
Hundreds attended the event, overseen by The Sculpture Project co-chairs Ari Zorn and Julie Mitchell, which took place outside the town’s Mason Library where the life-like artwork sits on a stone bench.
DuBois’ great grandson Jeffrey Alan Peck called Blake’s masterpiece an homage to peace.
Dr. Imari Paris Jeffries, President & CEO of Embrace Boston, said of the town’s memorial to the founding member of the NAACP and creator and first editor of the human right’s organization’s historic Crisis Magazine, a “monument to love.”
Dr. David Levering Lewis, the historian and Dr. DuBois’ two-time Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, reflected on the social activist’s past, revealing that scholars of 80 years ago considered the Great Barrington native, a “national treasure.”
As is the character of the event’s hometown, the two-hour event was an amalgam of multicultural preferences. The official monument dedication program not only listed the Top Legacy Sponsors & Donors (called Legacy contributors), it gave weight to those individual supporters (Souls), who contributed $10 to $240, and all those who were listed, according to donation amounts, as Justice, Freedom, Democracy and Equity donors.
Gratitude was extended to Great Barrington in-kind donations from the community market to the churches to the librarians and to the SoCo Creamery where a popular ice cream flavor was renamed DuBoisenberry.
Gwendolyn Hampton Van Sant, CEO and founder of Multicultural Bridges, is an expert in cultural diversity. She also is a board member of the W.E.B. DuBois Sculpture Project. She led the audience in a remembrance tribute to those special persons, now deceased who, like DuBois, did the work of forging a path to make it easier for those who came after to navigate. Van Sant incorporated an emotional Ancestral Calling into the program.
In addition to Mr. Peck, scholars Lewis and Jeffries and Ms. Van Zant, the speakers included Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and State Representative Leigh Davis -3rd Berkshire District.
The Sculpture Project event co-chairs Ari Zorn and Julie Michaels delivered the welcome for the project which they brought to fruition and culmination over several years, which included selecting Mr. Blake to sculpt the monument.
It is hoped that monies will continue to be raised to help with the development of a museum in Accra, Ghana, where DuBois, passed in 1963, a day before the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington.
The program included rousing musical presentations with selections and stylization presented in a way that commented on the times, as much as the speeches did: Wanda Houston performing “Life Every Voice and Sing. Gina Coleman & the Misty Blues band, performing “This Little Light of Mine” and “Hold On”; Randall Martin’s Sweet Life Project featuring Carla Page on Steve Wonder’s “Higher Ground”, Burt Bachrach’s “What the World Needs Now,” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” – all the latter seeming like a commentary on the immediacy of DuBois message.
It was evident that event producers were aware of the music Du Bois loved during his lifetime, and current music espousing his lifelong messages that he would love if he were alive today.
The speeches drew the parallel with current events.
Mr. Peck quoted from his great-grandfather’s “The Future of the American Negro,” published in 1953. He emphasized the need for today’s generations to uplift his great-grandfather and be inspired by his (example) in times like these.
The event did remember the children, as DuBose remembered them in his “Credo” read by Luna Zander. “I believe in the training of children … for Life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth.”
After the performance by the Berkshires’ “Youth Alive Step & Dance Team”, the anticipated pride in performance took a back seat to their collective awe in seeing Richard Blake’s sculpture work up close. The youngsters took turns sitting on the marble bench next to the sculpture and grasping DuBois’ open palm.
Peck said, “It’s fitting (my grandfather) sits here (at the entrance to the town’s library) and welcomes townsfolk to a place of knowledge, a home of books, and a sanctuary of truth.”
Bernice Elizabeth Green, with Joanna D. Williams and Chelsea Jo Williams
All photos on this page are by photojournalist Stephanie Zollshan for the Berkshire Eagle.
