GREAT BARRINGTON — With an open hand outstretched to the world, a bronze visage of W.E.B. Du Bois now sits beside the steps of the Mason Public Library.

The statue’s gesture is important to note in this memorial to “the intellectual father of the modern Civil Rights Movement” in his birthplace, said Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston. At an unveiling ceremony in front of the library on Main Street on Saturday afternoon, Jeffries said viewers wouldn’t find a sword, a closed fist or a flag in Du Bois’ grip.

Rather, contrasting it with the scores of Confederate statues that still stand across the United States, the Du Bois statue would be a monument “not to war, but to wisdom; not to terror, but to truth; not to erasure, but to W.E.B. Du Bois.”

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