Preserving History: W.E.B. Du Bois & the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church

The OLLI Distinguished Speakers Series presents
Dr. Frances Jones-Sneed & Eugenie Sills on

Preserving History: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church

March 16, 2021; 7pm EST

The historic African-American Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois was born and raised, is being transformed into an African American heritage site and cultural center dedicated to educating the public about the life and legacy of Du Bois and the Berkshires’ rich African American history. Learn more about these efforts from two of its leaders.

Hear from Frances Jones-Sneed, Professor Emeritus of History, Political Science and Public Policy at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and associate editor of African American Heritage In the Upper Housatonic Valley.  Dr. Jones-Sneed is a board member of Clinton Church Restoration and chair of their Scholars Council. She is also co-director of the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail and a trustee at the Reverend Samuel Harrison House in Pittsfield, another historic African-American center in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

Clinton Church Restoration's Interim Executive Director, Eugenie Sills, will join her. She was the founder and publisher of the award-winning regional publication, The Women’s Times, a co-founder of the biannual festival Lift Ev’ry Voice: Celebrating African American Heritage and Culture in the Berkshires, and was a founding board member of the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts and the Berkshire Creative Economy Council. 

“This initiative will not only preserve an important piece of African American history in rural New England, it is vital to interpreting the life and legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois in his hometown.”
—David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning Du Bois biographer