Black History Month celebrates Du Bois in song and spirit
Feb. 9, 2012 — The spirit and voice of seminal American black leader W.E.B. Du Bois will come alive Feb. 16 at SUNY Plattsburgh, with a special performance of song and prose. The program is part of Black History Month celebrations in the North Country.
Du Bois, who died on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, was the leading black intellectual activist of the early 20th Century, co-founded the Niagara Movement, which later evolved into the NAACP.
On Thursday evening Feb. 16, Dr. MaryNell Morgan will offer her celebration of Du Bois, in what she terms a “Participatory Performance,” as she sings and recites passages from the Sorrow Songs featured in his best known work, “The Souls of Black Folk.”
“There are many reasons to celebrate Dr. Du Bois during Black History Month and throughout the year,” said Dr. Morgan, a singer-scholar who teaches at the Empire State College in Saratoga Springs. “Among those reasons is his work to preserve and promote the music of Black folk.”
Du Bois, the first black man to win a Ph.D. from Harvard, used bars of music from traditional spirituals–which he called “sorrow songs”– as epitaphs for the fourteen essays in “The Souls of Black Folk.”
The program is co-sponsored by the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association and the Center for Diversity, Pluralism and Inclusion at the SUNY Plattsburgh.
It is free and open to the public, at 6 p.m. in the Cardinal Lounge, Angell Hall, on the University Campus.
For more information, call 518-834-5180 or visit: www.northcountryundergroundrailroad.com.
Posted: February 10th, 2012 under General News.