The African American Community in Rural New England: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Clinton AME Zion Church (formerly published as Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois: A History of the Clinton A. M. E. Zion Church) is a story of a small New England church s role in the national civil rights movement. Featuring more famous figures such as Du Bois, this book also tells the story of the church s lesser known members who struggled to keep it in existence, all the while fighting for their rights in a shifting social climate. The African American Community in Rural New England is the heroic tale of a small group of African Americans who founded and have maintained their church in a small New England town for nearly 140 years. The church is the Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the town is Great Barrington, Massachusetts the hometown of the leading African American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois attended the church as a youth and wrote about it; these writings are one source for this history. As Pulitzer-prize-winning biographer David Levering Lewis writes: The AME Zion Church turns out not to have been 'sometimes attended' but a place of continual and important social reference for him. He filed regular reports to the Globe and Freeman detailing the church s busy doings the AME Zion Sewing Society s monthly supper at the home of Mr. Jason Cooley (April 10); the well-attended quarterly-meeting services, attracting worshipers from Lee and Stockbridge (May 29); . . . and, in the last report for 1883 (December 26), the startling news that that fifteen-year-old Willie is secretary of the Zion Sewing Society. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts Amherst comments: David Levinson s The African American Community in Rural New England: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Clinton AME Zion Church brings the vibrant history of African Americans and the Black church in rural New England out of the shadows. It provides much-needed context for a new generation of scholars, students, and anyone interested in the story of race and race relations in the United States. Novelist Jervey Tervalon writes: his book offers an intimate historical view of the Black church and Black life in rural New England: the world that W.E.B. Du Bois was born into. Jervey Tervalon, author of Dead Above Ground and Understand This. " The AME Zion Church turns out not to have been sometimes attended but a place of continual and important social reference for him. He filed regular reports to the Globe and Freeman detailing the church s busy doings the AME Zion Sewing Society s monthly supper at the home of Mr. Jason Cooley (April 10); the well-attended quarterly-meeting services, attracting worshipers from Lee and Stockbridge (May 29); . . . and, in the last report for 1883 (December 26), the startling news that that fifteen-year-old Willie [Du Bois] is secretary of the Zion Sewing Society." --David Levering Lewis "David Levinson s The African American Community in Rural New England: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Clinton AME Zion Church brings the vibrant history of African Americans and the Black church in rural New England out of the shadows. It provides much-needed context for a new generation of scholars, students, and anyone interested in the story of race and race relations in the United States." --Whitney Battle-Baptiste, director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts Amherst David Levinson is a cultural anthropologist and editor of the recently published African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley. He is the author or editor of over two dozen major books and reference works. He is the senior editor of American Immigrant Cultures: Builders of a Nation and editor of the award-winning Religion & Society series. David also founded and directs the W. E. B. Du Bois Global Research Collection and Directory Online. He has lived in Great Barrington since 1996. Used Book in Good Condition