This talk will explore W.E.B. Du Bois, the family historian and genealogist. From adolescence through old age, Du Bois scouted and sketched, documented and imagined his ancestral heritage, including his Huguenot lineage. He typed up family trees, memorialized his known and unknown forbears, obsessed over gravesites, and wrote countless letters and proposals reflecting his evolving understanding of his ancestry.  In spite of the scale and scope of this private work, we have yet to fully engage with W.E.B. Du Bois, the genealogist, the subject of this talk.

This presentation will be entirely online and will be accessible via a link provided after registration.

Dr. Kendra Taira Field is an associate professor in History and the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University. She is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and co-founder of the African American Trail Project. Field is the author of Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War (Yale, 2018) and served as Assistant Editor to David Levering Lewis’ W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography (Henry Holt, 2009). Her current book project, The Stories We Tell (W.W. Norton) is a history of African American genealogy and storytelling from the Middle Passage to the present. Field has been awarded fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, and Harvard University's Charles Warren Center in American History. She is the recipient of the Western Writers of America's 2017 Spur Award for Best Western Short Nonfiction, the 2016 Boahen-Wilks Prize, and the 2022 NAACP W.E.B. Du Bois Award. Field has advised and appeared in historical documentaries including Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" (2013), "Roots: A History Revealed" (2016), and “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre” (2021). Field received her Ph.D. in American History from New York University. She also holds a Master's in Public Policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. from Williams College. Before entering the academy, she worked in education, organizing, and the non-profit sector in Boston and New York.

General Admission $8

Discounted Admission $5 (For HHS Members, seniors, students)

Free Admission for veterans, active military members, and their families

Sponsored by RBT CPAs

This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature

This program is funded in part by a Humanities New York SHARP Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal American Rescue Plan Act

Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.