Continuing on the value of ethnography, today I spent some time going through the 3-volume Conquests of the Cross, a history of Christian mission up to nearly the close of the nineteenth century. The volumes are filled with extracts from missionary letters, diaries and reports and also have hundreds of detailed line drawings. While the focus is missionaries and their activities, there is also much ethnography (in prose and image) which reminded me that many early ethnographic accounts were written by missionaries who were often the first outsiders on the scene.

I was also remined of the work of my advisor in graduate school, Raoul Naroll, on research methods and missionary reports. Much concerned with trustworthiness of information (”anthropology is about trustworthty information for untrustworthy sources”), he once did a study comparing missionary and ethnographer reports on the same communities. He found there was usually much agreement and only when it came to kinship, which required technical knowledge, was the ethnographer data clearly fuller and the missionary data more prone to error. This is not surpising as Naroll also found in other research that ethnography was fuller and more accurate when the ethnographer spoke the indigenous language and spent more than a year in the field. Missionaries often did and continue to do both.

We are nearing the end of two projects - Global Perspectives Issues and Ideas and Mission and Missionaries and one of the final tasks is to select extracts of primary text to use a sidebars which add a real-life dimension to the often scholarly articles. My role in this is to dig into ethnography to add a corss-cultural as well as human dimension. I like doing this as I like reading ethnography - rich and broad descriptions of the everyday lives and worlds of ordinary people. Much ethnograph is not terribly well written (anthropologists, after all, unliker historians, are not literary fellows), but that doesn’t really matter as the stories are often so compelling. I recall a fellow graduate student, Sue Horan, who was once described as reading ethnogrpahy as if it were murder mystery.

Although criticized for all sorts of bias -sexism, racism, classicism, colonialism - the best ethnography for me is the older ethnography because it is so rich in description and free of theoretical musings and searches for deep meaning. And because it is filled with the stories of people told in their own (translated) words. It troubles me to realize that several generations of anthropology students mostly read the short, standardized Holt, Rinehart ethnographies which surely introduced students to other places but at the expense of the detail which makes ethnography unique and special.

With a special town meeting, the annual town meeting, and the local election all coming up in the next 10 weeks, politics are heating up here in Great Barrington. Local politics always makes think od what Du Bois wrote about learning about democracy by observing the annual town meeting then held on the second floor of town hall, across the street from our offices. What he wrote about the meetings in the 870s and 1880s seems true today. Lots of noise and opinions and lots of discussion and slow progress.

Du Bois also wrote about the various factions or social divisions in town, and the town remains divided in varoius ways today. As an anthropologist, I think I ought to be able to figure this out, but it is never is simple as it looks and political interests often cut acorss the divisions.

I was pleased yesterday to receive the first review of African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley, a region-wide effort which I edited and we published last fall as part of the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Trail initiative. By the way, the initiative goes on with an online trail guide in the works and perhaps a second edition of the book. The review was in Midwest Book Review and said, in part, that the book “is an accessible insight into an oft-overlooked dimension of American history.” Nice words as this is what we tried to do. The review can be found at www.midwestbookreview.com under Reviewer’s Bookshelf (March 2007 edition), Greenspan’s bookshelf.

2006 has seen several important initiatives that have made African American history and culture in the Berkshires far more visible. I and Berkshire Publishing are proud to have a small part in this by publishing African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley in Sept. and Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois: A History of the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Oct. I am happy to report that there is much interest in both books and we look forward to more activity in 2007 and beyond.

Yesterday I visited the Avery Center here in Charleston. It is an important research facility for African American history in South Carolina and especially for the Charleston area. It has some relevance to our work on African American history because the Mass 54th regiment fought at Fort Wagner on the Charleston coast in 1863. I spent tie going through files of primary source material on the Mass 54th, Col. Shaw and related topics such as the Shaw School. It is important to see how African American events in the Berkshires have links to events elsewhere.

The center has a 10-minute video about it and its work. One frame was a photo of W. E. B. Du Bois on a visit to Charleston. Unfortunately, there was not time to dig around in the files for more on Du Bois.

On Saturday, Oct 28 the Clinton A. M. E. Zion Church her in Great Barrington held its 136th anniversary celebration. As Rev. Dozier noted, the church added 12 years since last year, when it elebrated its 122nd. The 12 years are a product of my research on the church which showed that first documented meeting was held in 1870.

The day also marked the publication of my church history: Sewing Cricles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois: A History fo the Clinton A. M. E. Zion Church. The title of the book is meant represent several themes that reappear over and over again through the church’s history. Sewing Circles is about the crucial role played by women in founding and maintaining the church. Dime Suppers is about the never-ending need to raise money to keep the doors open. And W. E. B. Du Bois (who attended and wrote about the church as a teenager) is about the church’s role in the national and local fight for freedom.

One of the important contributions of the church that was mentioned by several of those present on Saturday was its role as a home for young African American women who sometimes had no family here. It was older women of the church who filled the role of mother or aunt.

African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley was published almost two weeks ago and me Sewing Circles, Dime Supper, W. E. B. Du Bois; a History of the Clinton AME Zion Church goes to the printer tomorrow. An the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Trail was opened as well, with some 200 people in attendance at the event a the Col. Ashel House in Sheffield.

The launch event for the church history is on Oct 28 at 2pm at the Clinton Church in Great Barrington. It is also the church’s 136th anniversary celebration. Should be quite an event with readings of primary text from the book, comments by church members and friends, music by the Price Memorial (Pittsfield) AME Zion Choir and moving words from Rev. Esther Dozier.

African Americans in the region have been a very invisible “visible minority” for a long time. These new books and the trail have made them and their contributions much more visible.

Dr. Du Bois as perceptive obsever of life in Great Barrington as a booy and teenager, a skill he put to great use later in life as a student of American and African American life.

One of the things he noted about GB was how there was little public display of wealth, despite consdierbale wealth disparity in town. Sitting in Pearl’s restuarant bar last evening observing the traffic and people flow up Railroad Street only a few feet from the building (now gone) where Du Bois once roomed with his mother, I wondered what he would make of the scene. Peopkle loaded dopwn with bags from trendy shops. The flow of Mercedes, BMWs, large SUVs and the ocassional Corvette. Few of any of these folks are locals. Most are toruists or second home owners and the old ways of GB seem to mean little to them. But one of the changes as GB become more and more a top tourist destination.

W. E. B. Du Bois saw himself as an educator first and foremost. He came to mind as I was leafing through Times supplement on higher education yesterday. Lots and lots about what colleges to apply to and why - cost, easy to get in to, hot, good location, and so on. But, what I could never find was anything about how ones goes about picking a college that provides a strong curriculum in the subject a student is interested in. Seems to mke that this ought to be on the top of the list.