Born: 11 November 1896, United States
Died: 27 March 1977
Country most active: International
Also known as: Lola Shirley Graham Jr.
American-Ghanaian writer, playwright, composer and activist Shirley Graham Du Bois moved to Paris in 1926 to study composition at the Sorbonne, where she met other people of African descent who introduced her to new music and cultures. Returning to the United States, she worked as a music librarian while studying at Howard University, where she became head of the music department from 1929 to 1931. She started at Oberlin College at 1931, completing her bachelor’s in 1934 and master’s in 1935.
Her debut opera, 1932’s Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro, opened in Cleveland, Ohio with Stadium Opera Company, featuring an entirely African-American cast and orchestra and attracting 25,000 attendees over two nights. Incorporating elements of blues, spirituals and jazz, the score was believed lost until it was rediscovered after Harvard University purchased Du Bois’s papers in 2001.
In 1936, she was appointed director of the Chicago Negro Unit of the Federal Theater Project, part of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration. She wrote musical scores and directed productions, among other work, until the project was shut down in 1939 due to anti-communist and racist rhetoric.
Returning to her hometown of Indianapolis in 1940, she began working at the Phillis Wheatley Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), building a theatre program before becoming director of the YMCA-USO group in Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
In 1954, she married W. E. B. Du Bois and together they travelled to Ghana in 1958 for the All-African Peoples’ Conference (AAPC), where she delivered a speech titled “The Future of All-Africa lies in Socialism.” The two became citizens of Ghana in 1961. She was forced to leave Ghana following the 1966 military-led coup d’état. She moved to Cairo, where she continued writing, studied Arabic and supported Afrocentrism.
On her first visit to China in 1959, the Du Boises were honored for their activism, and Graham Du Bois dedicated her time to advocating for women’s rights and connecting the Chinese proletarian struggle to the issues of African-Americans. 25 years later, she produced a movie in China called Women of the New China in 1974 after moving there amid the Cultural Revolution.