ABSTRACT
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in the small town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Nestled deep in the Berkshires, on the edge of the South Egremont Plain, was the maternal home of the Burghardt clan. Mary Burghardt was described as silent, determined and very patient. Du Bois described his mother as "brown and rather small with smooth skin and lovely eyes, and hair that curled and crinkled down each side of her forehead from the part in the middle". If a woman's place is in the home, how do we explain the history of women of African descent in the United States? Black women's work took place within two distinct spheres that were at the same time mutually reinforcing and antagonistic. One workplace was centered in their own homes and communities, the locus of family feeling. The chapter suggests that a lot about historical archaeology and its connection with the African American past.
