I owe a big thank you to…
- Donna Gouger, my trumpet lessons teacher at Smith who introduced me to Du Bois through the music of The Souls of Black Folk. Thank you for your creativity and enthusiasm.
- Becca Keyel, who knows how to make WordPress do anything you might want it to and then some. And who also doesn’t make a big deal out of it when your green pen flies across the room during your meeting.
- Meridith Richter, who taught me how to use a Zoom audio recorder. Who knew Zoom did more than just meetings?
- Adam Holmes and the Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst who host a weekly Monday morning “Breakfast with Du Bois” reading group. Thank you for introducing me to some of Du Bois’s vast number of writings. It’s incredible to hear how people who have studied Du Bois their whole lives respond to his writing.
- Dr. MaryNell Morgan, who is one of the said people who have studied Du Bois all her life. Thank you for your knowledge, beautiful singing, and putting up with Sorrow Songs played on the trumpet.
- my mom, Mary Richards, who helped transcribe the German words in Du Bois’s letter to himself.
To anyone interested in Du Bois, I recommend exploring the completely digitized Du Bois Papers through the UMass Amherst Archives. If you’re at one of the five colleges, it’s more than worth the PVTA trip to the UMass Special Collections & University Archives to see some of the collection in person.
The Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst is another great resource for research help and Du Bois-related programming.
As part of this project, I made a TikTok, which can be viewed here.