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A "Celebration of Learning" symposium honoring African-American scholar, Pan-Africanist, and social activist W.E.B. Du Bois will be held this Thursday, February 23, beginning at 11:15 a.m. in Room 163 in the Lincoln Campus Center. The symposium will observe the 127th anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois.
Three members of the W.E.B. Du Bois Afro-American Studies Department, David Du Bois, William Strickland, and Michael Thelwell, will discuss the intellectual legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois.
Following the speakers' presentations, a student donated plaque inscribed with a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois will be unveiled by the Graduate Student Senate and the W.E.B. Du Bois Petition Coalition. The bronze plaque will be installed in the courtyard of the University library which was named in honor of W.E.B. Du Bois last October 5 by the UMass Board of Trustees.
The student donated plaque reads as follows:
"I still think today as yesterday that the color line
is a great problem of this century. But today I see
more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem
of race and color, lies a greater problem which both
obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that
so many civilized persons are willing to live in
comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance
and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that
to maintain this privilege men have waged war until
today war tends to become universal and continuous,
and the excuse for this war continues largely to be
color and race."
-- W.E.B. Du Bois
"Fifty Years After," 1953,
Preface to the Jubilee Edition of
The Souls of Black Folk
For further information, contact Program Coordinator Vanessa Harris at (413) 545-2896.