Great Barrington native W.E.B. Du Bois, born on Church Street a few hundred feet from this spot five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, was an early founder of the Civil Rights movement in the United States and a father of Pan Africanism abroad. He wrote fondly of his childhood by the Housatonic River and in the shadow of two great hills, while condemning the wooden and paper waste that polluted the river. In 1930 he returned to the Berkshires to deliver the keynote address at a Great Barrington High School reunion, a lecture titled “The Housatonic River,” in which he called for rescuing and cleaning the river, restoring its ancient beauty, and making it the center of the town, the valley, and perhaps a new measure of civilized life. Even after traveling the world, he continued to remember the Housatonic River, calling it the natural Main Street of Great Barrington and envisioning it as a clear stream flanked by broad roadways and parks as the lifestream of a town. At age 93, in a letter of June 13, 1951, he again affirmed the river as the valley’s physical and perhaps spiritual center, linking its restoration to broader freedoms, inspirations, aspirations, and the enriching of culture through the land. In September 2002, W.E.B. Du Bois River Park was dedicated to honor his love of the Housatonic River, his lifelong campaign for environmental justice, and the restoration of rivers everywhere. A rain garden between the street and the river helps restore the river’s floodplain by slowing and dispersing runoff, using indigenous wetland plants to filter and cleanse the water as it soaks into the soil, and producing seeds to vegetate other areas along the River Walk; more than 200 varieties of native plants, trees, and shrubs have been planted there, reflecting Du Bois’s belief that just as biodiversity is essential for a healthy river system, cultural diversity is the foundation of a just and civilized society.

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Great Barrington Housatonic River Walk

Photo: Larry Gertner