Shirley Graham Du Bois facts for kids
Shirley Graham Du Bois (born Lola Shirley Graham Jr.; November 11, 1896 – March 27, 1977) was an American writer, composer, and activist. She worked hard for the rights of African Americans and other groups. She won important awards like the Messner and Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her books.
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Shirley Graham Du Bois: Her Life Story
Shirley Graham Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1896. She was the only girl among five children. Her father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, so her family moved a lot. In 1915, she finished high school in Spokane, Washington.
Early Life and Education
In 1921, Shirley married Shadrach T. McCants. They had two sons, Robert and David. In 1926, Shirley moved to Paris, France, to study music at the Sorbonne. She hoped this education would help her find better work to support her children. In Paris, she met many people from Africa and the Caribbean, which introduced her to new music and cultures. She and Shadrach divorced in 1927.
Shirley later studied at Howard University and then taught music at Morgan College from 1929 to 1931. In 1931, she went to Oberlin College, earning her bachelor's degree in 1934 and her master's in music in 1935.
Work in Theater and Music
In 1936, Shirley became the director of the Chicago Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. This was a government program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help people find jobs during tough economic times. She wrote music, directed plays, and did other important work.
In 1932, she wrote an opera called Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro. It was performed in Cleveland, Ohio. This opera featured an all-Black cast and orchestra. It told the story of Africans from their homeland, through slavery in America, to life in 1920s Harlem. The music blended blues, spirituals, jazz, and opera. The score for this opera was thought to be lost for many years but was found again in 2001.
The Federal Theater Project was later closed down in 1939. Some people who were against communism and equal rights for Black people worked to stop its funding. After this, Shirley Graham worked at the Phillis Wheatley Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Indianapolis, Indiana. She started a theater program there. She also directed a group for soldiers at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
Activism and Later Life
In the late 1940s, Shirley Graham joined a group called Sojourners for Truth and Justice. This group worked for women's rights and African-American freedom around the world. Around the same time, she also joined the American Communist Party.
In 1951, she married W. E. B. Du Bois, a famous civil rights leader. She was 54, and he was 83. In 1958, Shirley Graham Du Bois and her husband visited Ghana, a country in Africa. She gave a speech at the All-African Peoples' Conference, a meeting of African groups working for independence. She spoke about how African countries could work together for a better future. In 1961, Shirley and W.E.B. Du Bois became citizens of Ghana.
Shirley Graham Du Bois continued her activism. In 1964, she met with Malcolm X in Cairo to discuss how African leaders could support civil rights issues in the U.S. She also helped start a television screenwriting course in Ghana to train new writers.
Shirley Graham Du Bois and her husband were honored in China in 1959 for their work for Black liberation and the freedom of all people of color. She focused on women's struggles and building connections between China and Black Americans.
In 1967, she had to leave Ghana and moved to Cairo, Egypt. There, she kept writing, studied Arabic, and supported Afrocentrism, which focuses on African culture and history. Later, she moved to China again. She supported the Chinese Communists and praised their music programs. She also spent time in Chinese communities and with the Red Guards, a group of young people who supported the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1970, she visited the U.S. to give talks at Yale and UCLA. She spoke about important topics like imperialism (when one country controls another), capitalism, and colonialism. She also shared her experiences in countries like China and Vietnam, which were building socialist societies. She donated W.E.B. Du Bois’ writings to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
In 1974, she produced a movie in China called Women of the New China.
Death and Legacy
Shirley Graham Du Bois passed away from breast cancer on March 27, 1977, at the age of 80, in Beijing, China. She was buried in the Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionary Heroes. Many important Chinese political figures attended her funeral and honored her as a hero for her dedication to people around the world.
Honors and Recognition
Her old college, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, has honored Shirley Graham Du Bois. They held a conference in 2020 called Intersections: Recovering the Genius of Shirley Graham Du Bois Symposium. This event celebrated her amazing work as a composer, activist, and public figure.
Her writings and papers are kept in special collections at:
- The University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts
- George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia
- Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Shirley Graham Du Bois: Her Works
After studying in Paris, Shirley Graham wrote the opera Tom Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro (1932). This opera used music, dance, and storytelling to show the journey of Africans from their homeland, through slavery, to freedom in North America. It was very popular, with thousands of people attending its first performances.
She also wrote several plays, including:
- Deep Rivers (1939), a musical
- It's Morning (1940), a short tragedy
- I Gotta Home (1940), a short drama
- Track Thirteen (1940), a radio comedy (her only published play)
- Elijah's Raven (1941), a comedy
- Dust to Earth (1941), a tragedy
Shirley Graham used theater to share the stories and viewpoints of Black women, offering a different perspective from what was often seen at the time. Even though it was hard to get her plays on Broadway, they were performed by important Black theater companies and colleges. Her works Track Thirteen and Tom-Tom were also aired on the radio.
When it became difficult to get her plays published, Shirley Graham started writing books. From the 1950s, she focused on writing biographies for young readers about important African-American and world figures. She wanted more books in school libraries that featured notable Black Americans. Because she knew many of her subjects personally, her books about Paul Robeson and Kwame Nkrumah are especially interesting. She also wrote about Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, Booker T. Washington, Gamal Abdul Nasser, and Julius Nyerere.
Books for Young Readers
- Dr. George Washington Carver, Scientist (1944)
- Paul Robeson, Citizen of the World (1946)
- Your Most Humble Servant: Benjamin Banneker (1949) – This book won an award!
- The Story of Phillis Wheatley: Poetess of the Revolution (1949)
- The Story of Pocahontas (1953)
- Jean Baptiste Pointe duSable: Founder of Chicago (1953)
- Booker T. Washington: Educator of Head, Hand and Heart (1955)
- His Day Is Marching On: A Memoir of W.E.B. Du Bois (1971)
- Julius K. Nyerere, Teacher of Africa (1975)
- Du Bois: A Pictorial Biography (1978)
Novels
- There Once Was a Slave (1947) – This historical novel about Frederick Douglass won the Messner Prize.
- Zulu Heart (1974)
