W. E. B. Du Bois was born just five years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This valedictorian of Great Barrington High School became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, lived and worked on three continents, was a founder of the NAACP and edited its Crisis magazine for nearly a quarter century. Such groundbreaking books as The Souls of Black Folk, The Philadelphia Negro, and Black Reconstruction helped to transform the study of African American history and to establish sociology as an academic discipline. Du Bois is widely credited as the father of both the modern civil rights movement in the U.S. and the Pan-African movement internationally. Du Bois' political interests date back to his teen-age years in Great Barrington when he served as a correspondent for the Philadelphia Courier reporting on the political happenings of the town. His interest in history began when he devoured the texts of the early historians and philosophers at the local bookstore. Today, three historical plaques (one of them at a National Historic Landmark site), a memorial park and a mural mark his legacy in Berkshire County.