When LeVar Burton got his Du Bois Medal, the crowd couldn’t resist

The crowd broke into song at Sanders Theatre last week as the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research honored LeVar Burton with the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal.

“Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high. Take a look, it’s in a book, a Reading Rainbow!” the crowd sang amid applause for the beloved host of the PBS series “Reading Rainbow” that ran from 1983 until 2006. The iconic actor, director, producer, podcaster, and education advocate is also widely known for his roles as Geordi La Forge in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and Kunta Kinte in “Roots.” 

Burton beamed as he soaked in the audience’s adoration at the Oct. 1 ceremony and took a moment to honor his mother, Erma Gene Christian, for the influence she had on his education. The actor went on to invoke Fredrick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and James Baldwin. “I am, by definition, a storyteller,” he said. “I am a storyteller, walking in the tradition of storytellers that have informed and enlightened humanity since before the spoken language.”

While sharing his appreciation for the award, Burton also thanked Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center, for his “eminent wisdom and patience.” He continued: “You have changed my life and the way I see myself as a citizen of this country.”

The W.E.B. Du Bois Medal is the highest honor given in the field of African and African American Studies at Harvard.

“We come together today to honor those who embody the goals of unifying rather than dividing, respecting rather than disparaging, engaging thoughtfully rather than dismissing out of hand,” Gates said. “Each year here in glorious Sanders Theatre, we honor profound contributions to Black society and culture with the distinguished Du Bois event named in honor of Harvard’s first Black Ph.D.”

Along with Burton, medalists included former Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith; director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem Thelma Golden; African entrepreneur and philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa; civil rights advocate and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, J.D. ’84; and the human-rights and environmental activist Vice President of Colombia Francia Elena Márquez Mina. Special readings from Du Bois’ work were given by Provost John F. Manning ’82, J.D. ’85, and Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Previously announced recipients filmmaker, writer, producer, and professor Spike Lee and musician, songwriter, producer and actor Ice T were unable to attend the event but sent their regrets.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey ’92 joined the event to help present the award to Delaney-Smith, who coached Healey during her undergraduate years in the College.

“One of the things that W.E.B. Du Bois said was, ‘Young people learn more from what you are than what you teach.’ I think Kathy Delaney-Smith embodies that statement,” Healey said. The governor shared Delaney-Smith’s many accolades while highlighting her work as a “force for positive social change.”

At the age of 21, Delaney-Smith began working as the girls’ basketball coach at Westwood High School and saw firsthand the inequities that existed in girls’ and women’s sports. In response, she began filing lawsuits under Title IX to get what her team needed. She continued her tireless work at Harvard.

Fellow honoree Crenshaw, a law professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, was welcomed back to Harvard for her impactful work. Crenshaw is credited with being a founder of critical race theory and popularizing the theory of intersectionality.

“I am overwhelmed with pride to accept this medal from the Hutchins Center, from my alma mater, and from Skip Gates,” she said. “It’s exceptionally meaningful for any race scholar to see one’s own name in the same sentence as the foremost scholar, activist of the 20th century, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois.”

Márquez Mina, an activist and lawyer who became Colombia’s first female vice president of African descent, was celebrated as the first Du Bois Medal recipient from Latin America.

In a speech delivered in Spanish, the Colombian vice president recognized Gates for strengthening “the heritage that we are building in Colombia,” and Alejandro De La Fuente, the director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center, for playing a fundamental role in shaping the agenda of people of African descent in the Americas in the struggle for social justice.

Past honorees include basketball Hall of Famer, activist, and writer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2022), hip-hop artist and actor Queen Latifah (2019), boxer and activist Muhammad Ali (2015), and Civil Rights activist and longtime Congressman John Lewis (2014).