W.E.B. Du Bois maintained a strong attachment to Great Barrington throughout his life, especially to the house of the Black Burghardts, his grandparents' home where he had lived as a child. He returned frequently, both of his children were born in Great Barrington, and he buried his infant son Burghardt, his adult daughter Yolande, and his first wife Nina Gomer Du Bois in Mahaiwe Cemetery. When White rioters terrorized Atlanta's Black community in 1906, he sent Nina and Yolande to Great Barrington as a safe haven. In 1928, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, friends from throughout the U.S., working with local African American forester and land entrepreneur Warren Davis, gave him his childhood home. He hoped to remodel the modest farmer's cottage into a middle-class summer retreat, but the Depression of the 1930s made that impossible. Although he kept the property for 26 years, he was never able to restore it, and after the house fell into greater disrepair, he sold it to a neighbor in 1954 at age 86. The house was soon demolished, but he kept fire tongs from the old house with him until the end of his life as a reminder of its importance and all it meant to him.

Photo: Steve Stoessel

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Mass. Amherst

Photo: Cosmos Mariner