Those About Him Remained Silent

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Those About Him Remained Silent

The Battle over W. E. B. Du Bois

Amy Bass

Table of Contents

OTHER:
Obama, Du Bois and Hitler: "Qui tacet consentire videtur" ("Silence gives consent"). A post by Amy Bass on the University of Minnesota Press blog.

$24.95 cloth/jacket
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4495-7

Uncovers racism and red-baiting in the dynamic between the cold war and civil rights

On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois died in exile in Ghana at the age of 95, more than a half century after cofounding the NAACP. Five years after his death, residents of Great Barrington, the small Massachusetts town where Du Bois was born in 1868, proposed recognizing his legacy through the creation of a memorial park on the site of his childhood home. Supported by the local newspaper and prominent national figures including Harry Belafonte and Sydney Poitier, the effort to honor Du Bois set off an acrimonious debate that bitterly divided the town. Led by the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, opponents compared Du Bois to Hitler, vilifying him as an anti-American traitor for his communist sympathies, his critique of American race relations, and his pan-Africanist worldview.

In Those About Him Remained Silent, Amy Bass provides the first detailed account of the battle over Du Bois and his legacy, as well as a history of Du Bois’s early life in Massachusetts. Bass locates the roots of the hostility to memorialize Du Bois in a cold war worldview that reduced complicated politics to a vehement hatred of both communism and, more broadly, anti-Americanism. The town’s reaction was intensified, she argues, by the racism encoded within cold war patriotism.

Showing the potency of prevailing, often hidden, biases, Those About Him Remained Silent is an unexpected history of how racism, patriotism, and global politics played out in a New England community divided on how—or even if—to honor the memory of its greatest citizen.

“Amy Bass’s excellent history of ‘un-American activities’ in a pleasant New England town is another cautionary illustration of the banality of evil: in this case, the long, willful distortion of the progressive legacy of their greatest native son, W. E. B. Du Bois, by the people of Great Barrington in the service of a perverted patriotism.” —David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963

Amy Bass is associate professor of history at The College of New Rochelle. She is the editor of In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century and author of Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete (Minnesota, 2002).

232 pages | 14 b&w photos | 6 x 9 | 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: The Shadow of the Veil

1. Du Bois in Great Barrington and Beyond

2. Evolution of a Progressive Mind

3. Her Proudest Contribution to History

4. Where Willie Lived and Played

5. A Prophet without Honor

6. An Uncertain Legacy

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

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Those About Him Remained Silent *The Battle over W. E. B. Du Bois* Amy Bass Table of Contents OTHER: Obama, Du Bois and Hitler: "Qui tacet consentire videtur" ("Silence gives consent"). A post by Amy Bass on the University of Minnesota Press blog.		$24.95 cloth/jacket ISBN: 978-0-8166-4495-7
Uncovers racism and red-baiting in the dynamic between the cold war and civil rights On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois died in exile in Ghana at the age of 95, more than a half century after cofounding the NAACP. Five years after his death, residents of Great Barrington, the small Massachusetts town where Du Bois was born in 1868, proposed recognizing his legacy through the creation of a memorial park on the site of his childhood home. Supported by the local newspaper and prominent national figures including Harry Belafonte and Sydney Poitier, the effort to honor Du Bois set off an acrimonious debate that bitterly divided the town. Led by the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, opponents compared Du Bois to Hitler, vilifying him as an anti-American traitor for his communist sympathies, his critique of American race relations, and his pan-Africanist worldview. In Those About Him Remained Silent, Amy Bass provides the first detailed account of the battle over Du Bois and his legacy, as well as a history of Du Bois’s early life in Massachusetts. Bass locates the roots of the hostility to memorialize Du Bois in a cold war worldview that reduced complicated politics to a vehement hatred of both communism and, more broadly, anti-Americanism. The town’s reaction was intensified, she argues, by the racism encoded within cold war patriotism. Showing the potency of prevailing, often hidden, biases, Those About Him Remained Silent is an unexpected history of how racism, patriotism, and global politics played out in a New England community divided on how—or even if—to honor the memory of its greatest citizen. “Amy Bass’s excellent history of ‘un-American activities’ in a pleasant New England town is another cautionary illustration of the banality of evil: in this case, the long, willful distortion of the progressive legacy of their greatest native son, W. E. B. Du Bois, by the people of Great Barrington in the service of a perverted patriotism.” —David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 Amy Bass is associate professor of history at The College of New Rochelle. She is the editor of In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century and author of Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete (Minnesota, 2002). 232 pages \| 14 b&w photos \| 6 x 9 \| 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The Shadow of the Veil 1. Du Bois in Great Barrington and Beyond 2. Evolution of a Progressive Mind 3. Her Proudest Contribution to History 4. Where Willie Lived and Played 5. A Prophet without Honor 6. An Uncertain Legacy Acknowledgments Notes Index