LEWISTON – In a Bates College symposium Friday and Saturday, Oct. 10 and 11, guests from as far away as Germany will use music, drama and scholarly presentations to mark the 100th anniversary of a milestone in African American thought.

“W.E.B. Du Bois and ‘The Souls of Black Folk’: The First 100 Years” celebrates and reassesses Du Bois – a philosopher, sociologist, historian, cofounder of the NAACP and a writer accomplished in a wealth of genres – and his 1903 collection of essays examining the myriad aspects of the African American experience.

“‘The Souls of Black Folk’ discusses all the major topics of that period – violence against black people, black resistance, black historical figures, the role of the black intellectual, what black leadership should be like, the aspirations of African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century,” said symposium organizer Charles Nero, an associate professor of rhetoric at Bates. “(Poet) Langston Hughes said that the book reads like a resume for the race.”

The symposium comprises two days of presentations by scholars from Bates and away, an exhibit tapping a Du Bois archive in Massachusetts, one-act plays exploring key themes in African-American history, and a concert of sacred music by tenor Chauncey Packer.

Also, the George and Helen Ladd Library is the site for an exhibition of photographs and other Du Bois biographical materials. On display Sept. 29 to Oct. 13, the materials are provided by the Special Collections and Archives Department of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“In ‘The Souls of Black Folk,’ Du Bois pronounced that the 20th century would be defined by the color line. So we should ask, why has Maine become the whitest state in the nation at the end of the 20th century?”

The Du Bois symposium is sponsored by Bates’ programs in African-American studies and American cultural studies, the Multicultural Center, the Dean of Faculty’s Office and the theater and rhetoric department. For more information, phone Nero at 786-6415 or e-mail [email protected].