{"id":9448,"date":"2014-02-14T16:35:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T21:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=9448"},"modified":"2014-02-14T16:35:19","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T21:35:19","slug":"the-w-e-b-du-bois-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-w-e-b-du-bois-files\/","title":{"rendered":"The W.E.B. Du Bois Files"},"content":{"rendered":"

February\/March 2014 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

For decades, the FBI tailed him. But every summer, for two weeks in July, the inspirational leader disappeared\u2026 to a lake in Maine<\/h3>\n

By Leigh Donaldson<\/p>\n

\"WEB-DuBois-Files\"<\/a>When the FBI, starting in 1933, investigated Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, they developed a file of 927 pages over 30 years, presumably because of his ties to the Communist Party. Agents carefully reproduced articles he wrote for The Crisis,<\/em> the monthly magazine he founded and edited for the NAACP; recorded his speeches; and tracked him on international visits to Moscow, Paris, and Berlin. But each summer, the trail grew cold for two weeks in July. Du Bois had disappeared. But where?<\/p>\n

Where else but Maine, where he came to hear himself think as a member of a unique summer retreat and gentlemen\u2019s club called The Cambridge Gun & Rod Club. Not Rod and Gun<\/em>? Nope. Like so many things about the club, its title breezily flouts convention.<\/p>\n

The club, which thrives today, was originally an interracial group of about 14 members. It is now a gentlemen\u2019s club of exclusively professional African-American men. The membership is 35.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been around a long time,\u201d says James L. Brown IV, 63, the club\u2019s historian and a historic preservationist by profession who winters in Philadelphia. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re trying to get the lodge on the National Register of Historic Places, because where else could a group of black intellectuals congregate and share experiences during a time when shadows of slavery itself still darkened the national experience?\u201d<\/p>\n

Maine has had an arduous, uphill civil rights struggle that continues to this day. But, paradoxically, the Pine Tree State has maintained a reputation as a hiatus for those in search of quiet, natural beauty and a kind of cultural simplicity: \u2018the way life should be.\u2019<\/p>\n

The idea of Maine as a sanctuary from the chaotic demands of everyday urban life was not lost on African-Americans. In 1893, Cleve Miller of Boston summered on a farm in West Gardiner owned by the Goodwin family. Enthralled by the rustic beauty, he approached the Goodwins (who still own the property today) about starting a retreat. He returned in the summer of 1894 with several other friends, and a tradition was established where educated, affluent, and accomplished black leaders from \u2018all walks of life\u2019\u2013doctors, lawyers, religious leaders, professors, businessmen\u2013got together for a few weeks of absolute peace and tranquility along the shore of Lake Cobbosseecontee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a debating team or a brainstorming session,\u201d laughs Brown. \u201cInstead, there\u2019s an unwritten law that we leave the outside on the outside, though discussions are relatively intellectual in nature. Naturally, out of a spirit of camaraderie, issues that affect black people were, and certainly are, discussed. It\u2019s still exclusively for men, but the camp is open to other family members for visits throughout the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the earliest and most prestigious of these extraordinary vacationers was Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. Born in 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, this outstanding critic, scholar, scientist, author, and civil rights activist is widely considered to be among the most influential and controversial leaders in the 20th century. The first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, where he studied under William James and George Santayana, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the original founders of the NAACP in 1909 as well as a distinguished professor at University of Pennsylvania and Atlanta University. He won a fellowship to the University of Berlin, where he was trained in Hegel\u2019s approach to philosophy. He was the first African-American to be admitted into the National Institute of Arts & Letters.<\/p>\n

As a protean writer, he produced breakthrough works such as The Philadelphia Negro<\/em>, The Souls of Black Folk<\/em>, and Black Reconstruction<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Du Bois was also one of the first male civil rights leaders to address gender discrimination, particularly with respect to black women, and actively support the women\u2019s suffrage movement in an effort to integrate this largely white struggle. \u201cIt is important to understand that blacks were divided intellectually then as they continue to be now,\u201d notes Brown. \u201cWhile others like Booker T. Washington believed in blacks learning trades as a tool toward social advancement, Du Bois insisted that blacks cultivate their own aesthetic and cultural values.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the story goes, when Du Bois first arrived at the lodge in Maine somewhere around the early 1930s, according to surviving Goodwin family member Roger Goodwin, \u201cthere was no room for him. He graciously set up a tent on a bed of pine needles near the lodge and waited for a vacancy. He apparently never made a big deal about little things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is this generosity of spirit that so moved the very FBI agents\u2013otherwise keeping such close tabs on his activities\u2013that they closed their notebooks and gave him his privacy for two weeks every summer for 30 years.<\/p>\n

Here, beside the blue mirror of Cobbosseecontee, \u201che may have come up with his famous concept of \u2018The Talented Tenth,\u2019\u2019\u2019 speculates Brown. \u201cCertainly he worked on it here, especially when you consider the nature of his fellow campers, who were considered part of the Talented Tenth.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one of the most literate men of his age, Du Bois could charm one and all. Consider the following, where he identifies spirituals\u2013\u201cThe Sorrow Songs\u201d\u2013as singularly powerful historical narratives of the black experience. \u201cThey are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways\u2026through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope\u2013a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Often, FBI agents would begin their assignment with prejudice and then be profoundly turned around by Du Bois.<\/p>\n

But still, the investigations continued. The summer of 1958, when he was 89, was particularly controversial, since that was the year he was presented with the International Lenin Prize along with fellow winner Nikita Kruschev (in fact, Maine artist Rockwell Kent presented the award, $25,000). But whatever your yardstick is, Du Bois was an incredible humanist, and an even more accomplished writer.<\/p>\n

Du Bois continued a nearly unbroken string of summer visits until his death in 1963.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if he were here, the first thing he\u2019d do is introduce you to the other members of the club,\u201d says Brown, noting that a host of other notables, including boxer Joe Louis, have stayed at least a week or so. Current club members include jazz great Billy Strayhorn\u2019s nephew, doctors, dentists, and a prominent religious leader from the Boston area.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday a lot of history is shared, and thankfully, it\u2019s no longer a miracle for black intellectuals to find a place to express themselves as a group. Either way, Maine seems to dignify the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the process seems to dignify Maine.<\/p>\n

\u201cStill My Favorite Place To Be\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t been to the camp since 2008, and my dad stopped going about 10 or 12 years ago,\u201d James Brown V told us recently. He\u2019s the son of James Brown IV, who was interviewed by Leigh Donaldson for our 2001 story. \u201cThe members of the Cambridge Gun & Rod Club purchased the camp from the Goodwin family in 2008\u2026 But it\u2019s still my favorite place to be\u2026getting the fresh strawberries and strawberry jam biscuits and talking with the Goodwin family. Mr. Goodwin told us the camp was on the Underground Railroad. There were lots of hand-me-down stories, and W.E.B. DuBois\u2019s signature in the log book is preserved there. The camp didn\u2019t start with an exclusive African-American membership; it just happens to be now.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father\u2019s the historian, so he always hoped to preserve the camp and turn it into an historic place. But we\u2019d tell him, hey, come on, the guys just came to camp. Fishing and golf, mostly. Nobody really hunts anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown, who lives in Philadelphia, says, \u201cI\u2019m hoping to take my own son up there in a few years. It\u2019s American history, not black history. I have a bi-racial history\u2013it\u2019s easy to sit in a pocket and not hear the other side. But we\u2019re all Americans, and unless we\u2019re natives, we all got here on somebody\u2019s boat. It\u2019s not an argument, it\u2019s a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

James L. Brown V has named his own son Julian. \u201cWe have no ch\u00e2teau in France, and no vineyards, so we don\u2019t need a Sixth. Besides, it\u2019s very challenging to be a James Brown. Just don\u2019t ask me to dance!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February\/March 2014
\nFor decades, the FBI tailed him. But every summer, for two weeks in July, the inspirational leader disappeared\u2026 to a lake in Maine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-9448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-februarymarch-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9448"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9462,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448\/revisions\/9462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}