This is my letter to the Great Barrington school committee and these are my remarks at the September 3rd public hearing on renaming Monument Valley Regional Middle School after W. E. B. Du Bois. Read the chorus of voices who wrote the school committee in support of Du Bois here and watch the hearing in full here (worth watching until the end!) Listen to my interview with WAMC about this decades-long grassroots effort here. Read more about the historic vote here.
My Letter to the School Committee
Hello School Committee:
First, I want to thank you for revisiting this decision about naming one of our educational institutions after Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois and for reading the flood of letters arriving in your inbox today. In this time, there is nothing more significant than taking this step forward and prioritizing this conversation among the many important decisions in front of you right now. Thank you!
The words in the petition you drafted and approved speaks directly to the significance of this symbolic move. It is a moment for the District and its residents and citizens of all ages to take a stand for what we stand for when we lift up W. E. B. Du Bois: economic justice, progressive education, racial equity and civil rights.
Dr. Du Bois has left a legacy for Great Barrington to be proud of for centuries to come, and someday we will fully grasp all of the lessons he has tried to teach us. Thank goodness he was a prolific, brave writer who left his work for us to ponder and absorb! We are accountable to hearing the teaching of Dr. Du Bois. Just this past week, a County Superintendent in another district committed to learning more from Du Bois writings because his legacy is so significant to our County. As a white male with a doctorate in education, he acknowledged the challenge of embracing the complexity of Dr. Du Bois’s work.
I want to thank you for listening to (and reading the hundreds of letters from) our community members, partners, and arts and educational institutions on their reasons why Du Bois is so significant right now in this time of Black Lives Matter uprisings and this racialized reckoning of 2020 amidst a pandemic.
Thank you for being the leaders in education for this District. Often leaders guide folks where they need to go; a good reflection is where are you guiding us or even better, how might this current school committee guide us forward into an equitable future in education?
Please find my remarks below for this evening in addition to words directly from Dr. Du Bois’s descendants.
As a parent in the District, I also ask that you take this step forward firmly and unapologetically... Affirm the identity and belonging of families and students like mine in your District. Thank you!
See you this evening,
Gwendolyn VanSant, Great Barrington
Vice Chair of the W. E. B. Du Bois Legacy Committee
CEO & Founding Director of BRIDGE
Mother of BHRSD alumni and current middle schooler
My Remarks
“Education and work are the levers to uplift a people,” Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois says.
Our presentation and discussion here tonight is to uplift the work of a global scholar who stood for education for all. Health, justice, equity, liberation and fulfillment for all. Dr. Du Bois wanted us to value progressive and brave education, to explore truth, be discerning and critical thinkers and to embrace the journey in our own humanity towards these truths. He embodied growth and life-long learning. He stood for what education should be and what a teacher should model in terms of what we talk about now as a “growth mindset.” He was constantly acquiring data, shifting perspective, and sharing knowledge accordingly.
We have been working diligently as a community for decades to honor Dr. Du Bois with the baton being passed around from scholars, to activists, to activist-scholars alongside students, clergy, delegates, artists, and many other leaders working towards justice.
We all know the first attempt to name the new school was contentious for our community and left us with conflict, hurt, confusion, guilt and shame. We don't need to revisit that or return to it this evening. It left a scar that we have been massaging to heal for the better part of two decades.
No matter the project or small group of leaders working on this, we have been chipping away at the bias inherent in not wanting to name a school after a Black scholar. The schools we do have in this country that are named after Black scholars are often in neighborhoods that don't look like this one. The bias against Dr. Du Bois, I believe, is rooted in not understanding Dr. Du Bois as a Black Man who did not see a future and livelihood for his people in US capitalism and, with pages of history in between, made his decision to join US Communism party and ultimately retire in peace to Ghana. The bias against Dr. Du Bois is rooted also, I believe, in not valuing or possibly comprehending the quality, impact, and sheer volume of his work especially in his day and time… this work of a native son who is revered across the country and the world. Most people do not know (or do not choose to remember) that Du Bois broke ground for the NAACP, for Black scholars at Harvard, in sociology, journalism, human rights, and education. We, as a community of activists from several groups, have been diligently educating our community so that all of our students and residents have access to knowing this shared trailblazing legacy.
A few years back, community members including some members of the BHRSD Faculty suggested we consider renaming the school as part of the 150th birthday anniversary of Dr. Du Bois. We decided to wait and hold the 150th celebration in an intentional way where we honored community education and celebrated Du Bois’s four values of progessive education, economic justice, racial equity, and civil rights. The following year we began this discussion. It was decided to not have it be a committee-led discussion, but a community-based grassroots one, and so BRIDGE activists, allies, and partners embarked on conversations with the school. We landed on the idea that we needed a majority vote in favor of tonight’s discussion from the three towns. We organized, held forums, and had that vote in Spring 2019. It was resoundingly positive.
Dr. John Horan approached me in June in the midst of the Black Lives Matter uprisings offering to support bringing this effort to completion, and so we went before the School Committee and Selectboard and Great Barrington Du Bois Legacy. We garnered full support.
Now it is time to have this community dialogue civilly about Dr. Du Bois, his legacy, and why every child in our District should be proud to be educated in a town where Du Bois was born. Every faculty, staff, and administrator should aspire to the lessons Du Bois has taught us on education. Every community member should learn from the model of civic engagement and care and love for the Berkshires Du Bois showed. Each of us tonight have a different message and voice to share, and we all promise to deeply listen to one another and... to also stand for justice.
I share this quote from a June 2020 Architectural Digest article as I did at the Selectboard meeting last month because this renaming is a symbol that affirms the belonging of students often marginalized and it affirms the School District’s commitment to justice and providing a true authentic inclusive history and education to our students that integrates the contributions of African Americans. According to Brent Leggs, executive director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which aims to preserve Black historic sites across the U.S., it’s time to replace Confederate memorials with symbols that represent who we are as a culture now:
“Through meaningful dialogue, history, and the arts, our nation should explore how best to communicate the often-overlooked contributions and examples of Black excellence and activism to demonstrate our collective and contemporary values in public spaces… We should use this moment to create a more inclusive American landscape and public space that fills gaps in this nation’s civic identity.
What if, instead of statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate leaders, there were statues of Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and other Black heroes? What if there were plaques dedicated to remembering the selling of enslaved people, the lynching of African Americans, and other atrocities committed against Black Americans?”
We, collectively, have a responsibility to honor voices and contributions like the brilliant Dr. Du Bois now. When we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion… “game time” is not later, but now. There is simply no time for heteropatriarchal, White supremacist structures that limit our view and paralyze us, forcing some of us to exit stage left or worst, disregarding or even going so far to demonize transformational, impactful work like this work of honoring Dr. Du Bois in his hometown of Great Barrington. Now is not the time to mute certain voices simply because they are different from your own and now is also the time to honor Black leaders in our communities.
I leave you with Du Bois’ words followed by my reading one of the letters from his great great grandchildren:
“I have loved my work, I have loved people and my play, but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life, that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done.”
– W. E. B. Du Bois