The African American Community in Rural New England: W. E. B. Du Bois and His Boyhood Church (formerly published in hardcover as Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers and W. E. B. Du Bois) is the often heroic tale of a small group of African Americans who founded and have maintained their church in a small New England town for nearly 140 years. The church is the Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the town is Great Barrington, Massachusetts -- the home town of the leading African American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois attended the church as a youth and wrote about it; these writing being one source for this history. The book gives readers a broad view of the details of the church's history and recounts the story of its growth and declines and revivals within the context of regional history.