PITTSFIELD, Mass. — In honor of Black History Month, the Jonathan Edwards Library at Berkshire Community College (BCC) has selected 70 print books from its collection and put them on display through February.

 

The books, which include historical works, essays, poems and memoirs penned by Black authors, are located on the first floor of the library and are available for checkout. 

 

"The books chosen for display this year embody the theme of 'Black Resistance,' chosen by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), via powerful stories and truths that educate us about what it's like to be Black in our society," said Reference Librarian Andrea Robare. "Authors like Michael Eric Dyson, Ta-nehisi Coates, James Baldwin and Jesmyn Ward, to name a few, share their stories and expertise." 

 

Elsewhere on campus, Professor of Sociology Stacy Evans is integrating "Pittsfield Westside Neighborhood, A Case Study: Redlining in the Mill Towns of New England" into the classroom to add more local context to her Race and Ethnicity course. 

 

Redlining, according to Habitat for Humanity, is "the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor." 

 

The case study was commissioned by Greylock Federal Credit Union with the support of Berkshire Bank, the Berkshire Branch of the NAACP and the MCLA Foundation.   

 

"This study helps students connect the larger social patterns to the place where they live and makes what can seem distant real," Evans said. "They are reading not just about other places and other people, but about things that really happen in places they know." 

 

Finally, on Feb. 2, BCC's Student Engagement department presented "The Black-Jew Dialogues," a social justice comedy show that examined the relationship between African Americans and Jews through American history through sketches and interactive video. The show modeled what an honest, necessary and sometimes difficult cross-cultural conversation can look like, with dialogue stressing unity and advocacy across marginalized cultures.