[Marxism] Re: Paul Robeson House to be Restored

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At first I thought that Carlos misused "surrealism." I then looked it
up and found that it included "startling combinations of incongruous
elements of reality." On the other hand, what about "defense campaign."
Kudos here too, for I think that an affirmative campaign to preserve
the last home of Robeson should be considered a defense campaign.

It looks like a nice house. My own take is that H&G decided that it
provided a good cover for H&G. Not all H&Gs houses are mansions. As I
recall, very few are.

For surrealism, let's compare H&G's participation in preserving
Robeson's last residence with the attempt to name the new middle school
that serves Great Barrington, Massachusetts, after W.E.B. Dubois.

Technically, Paul Robeson was not a member of the CP. However, as my
father used to say: he was "just as gud." He most certainly was closer
to it than W.E.B. Dubois was. Dubois, for example, supported the 1958
alliance of Communist Party sympathizers, independents, and Trotskyists
in the New York State United Independent Socialist Party ticket. The
Daily Worker openly criticized him for this.

In 1961, at the age of 93, in an act of solidarity with the goals of
communism and in support of the CP's long record of fighting for
African-American equality, he openly joined the American Communist
Party. That same year he moved to Ghana.

However, the town in which DuBois grew up, Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, to which he affectionately referred many times, and
which should celebrate this outstanding genius of the 20th century,
failed to name its new middle school after him, choosing instead, the
name "Muddy Brook." "Muddy" indeed. Now that is truly surreal.

_____________________________

February 19, 2005
Du Bois Under Fire

It's about time that I report on the conflict over whether or not to
commemorate the most famous citizen in this small town's history, the
African-American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois.

If you were to visit Great Barrington today, on Presidents' Day Weekend
when its full of skiers and second home owners from New York, you'd
think it a sophisticated place, with dozens of sleek restaurants and
shops and East Mountain providing a picturesque backdrop. I remember
the shock, only a couple years' back, the first time I saw someone
using a cellphone on Main Street, but it's now a common sight (watch
out though, not all services work). In spite of the surface gloss,
however, there are deep divisions amongst the groups that now make up
the voting community.

W. E. B. Dubois sledded down the hill outside on snowy February days a
hundred years ago: "For recreation we played games: "marbles," hi-spy,"
"duck on a rock," and "Indians." We went mountain climbing and explored
caves. We swam, and coasted the long hill from far up Castle Street,
across the railroad tracks down to Main Street. Most of the children
used to skate; but not I for two reasons: skates cost too much, and
mother was afraid of the water." (This photo was taken from high up
Castle Street, where Du Bois would set off.)

Du Bois has been controversial here in recent months after a movement
began to name a new school after him--quite reasonably, as he is the
most eminent graduate of this school district, one of the leading
intellectuals of the 20th century, and also someone who dearly loved
the town and region. There was considerable resistance on the part of
the School Committee (on which I used to serve) and no support from
local officials. After a number of stormy meetings, the Committee chose
instead to name the school "Muddy Brook.". Now there's an effort to get
Church Street, where Du Bois was born, named after him, and David
Levinson, who is writing a book about the AME Zion church Du Bois
attended, hears that the police and the veterans' are organizing to
fight this. The selectboard is divided on the issue. They've done
something that's becoming more common when there's a truly
controversial issue: they are making it a ballot question instead of an
item on the warrant for town meeting in May. This means there'll be no
open discussion.

Du Bois wrote that he learned about democracy as a teenager in his
hometown of Great Barrington in the 1870s and 1880s, and his stories
echo some of the conflicts we see today. I'm reminded of what an
old-timer said to me after one of the first town meetings I attended:
"In here, this is democracy," he said. Then, sweeping his arm towards
the rest of the planet, he added, "Out there, that's just a republic."
Here's what Du Bois had to say.

"From early years, I attended the town meeting every Spring and in the
upper front room in that little red brick Town Hall, fronted by a Roman
"victory" commemorating the Civil War. I listened to the citizens
discuss things about which I knew and had opinions: streets and bridges
and schools, and particularly the high school, an institution
comparatively new. We had in the town several picturesque hermits,
usually retrograde Americans of old families. There was Crosby, the
gunsmith who lived in a lovely dale with brook, waterfall and water
wheel. He was a frightful apparition but we boys often ventured to
visit him. Particularly there was Baretown Beebe, who came from forest
fastnesses which I never penetrated. He was a particularly dirty,
ragged, fat old man, who used to come down regularly from his rocks and
woods and denounce high school education and expense.

"I was 13 or 14 years of age and a student in the small high school
with two teachers and perhaps 25 pupils. The high school was not too
popular in this rural part of New England and received from the town a
much too small appropriation. But the thing that exasperated me was
that every Spring at Town Meeting, which I religiously attended, this
huge, ragged old man came down from the hills and for an hour or more
reviled the high school and demanded its discontinuance.

"I remember distinctly how furious I used to get at the stolid town
folk, who sat and listened to him. He was nothing and nobody. Yet the
town heard him gravely because he was a citizen and property-holder on
a small scale and when he was through, they calmly voted the usual
funds for the high school. Gradually as I grew up, I began to see that
this was the essence of democracy: listening to the other man's opinion
and then voting your own, honestly and intelligently." (Du Bois, W. E.
B. (1968). The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois. New York:
International Publishers, pp. 91-92.)

Note: David Levinson is working on a history of the Clinton African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Great Barrington. The church was
founded by local Black citizens and recent arrivals from the south in
the 1860s. Du Bois was involved in the church as a teenager and wrote a
great deal about it in newspaper columns. The church has been the
center of the Black community in southern Berkshire County for nearly
150 years.

Karen Christensen

http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/blog/archives/on_main_street/

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