Shirley Graham Du Bois (born Lola Shirley Graham Jr.; November 11, 1896 – March 27, 1977) was an American-Ghanaian writer, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American causes, among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her works. She was also the second wife of activist W. E. B. Du Bois.
Lola Shirley Graham Jr. was born on November 11, 1896, in Indianapolis, as the only daughter among five children. Her father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and the family moved often due to her father's work in parsonages throughout the country. In June 1915, Shirley graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington.
She married her first husband, Shadrach T. McCants, in 1921. Their son Robert was born in 1923, followed by David Graham Du Bois in 1925. In 1926, Graham moved to Paris, France, to study music composition at the Sorbonne. It was there that she began composing the play Tom-Tom. She thought that the education in Paris might allow her to achieve better employment and be able to better support her children. Meeting Africans and Afro-Caribbean people in Paris introduced her to new music and cultures. Graham and McCants divorced in 1927.
Graham served as music librarian while attending Howard University as a nonmatriculated student under the tutelage of Professor Roy W. Tibbs. He recommended her for a teaching position at Morgan College which led to her position as head of the music department from 1929 to 1931.
In 1931, Graham entered Oberlin College as an advanced student and, after earning her BA in 1934, went on to do graduate work in music, completing a master's degree in 1935. In 1936, Hallie Flanagan appointed Graham director of the Chicago Negro Unit of the Federal Theater Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. She wrote musical scores, directed, and did additional associated work.
She converted Tom-Tom into a full opera in 1932, and it premiered in Cleveland, Ohio, commissioned by the Stadium Opera Company. Tom Tom featured an all-Black cast and orchestra, structured in three acts; act one taking place in an Indigenous African tribe, act two portraying an American slave plantation, and the final act taking place in 1920s Harlem. The music features elements of blues and spirituals, as well as jazz with elements of opera. The score of this opera was considered lost and has not been performed since its premiere until it was rediscovered in 2001 at Harvard University.
Graham briefly worked at the Federal Theatre Project before it was shut down in 1939 by a group of anti-communists. Elizabeth Dilling – a White supremacist and staunch anti-communist – as well as Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, a Nazi sympathizer and antisemite, sought to defund the Federal Theatre Project. The Federal Theatre Project eventually was defunded as a result of this anti-communist and racist rhetoric. From 1940 to 1942, Graham worked at the Phillis Wheatley Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she focused on establishing a theatre program and then became the director of the YMCA-USO group in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The YWCA supported the Federal Anti-Lynching Law. However, Elizabeth Dilling and anti-communist and White supremacist groups had claimed that YWCA was a "Communist-front organizations controlled by Jews" and attacked the organization's support for equal rights for Black peoples. Dilling's publication of "Red Channels" ultimately launched anti-communist backlash against Graham Du Bois, resulting in her work being pulled from libraries and censored.
In the late 1940s, Graham became a member of Sojourners for Truth and Justice – an African-American organization working for global women's liberation. Around the same time, she joined the American Communist Party.
In 1951, she married W. E. B. Du Bois, the second marriage for both. She was 54 years old; he was 83.
After the United States Supreme Court ruled that the State Department could not deny passports to citizens who refused to sign affidavits that they were not communists, Graham Du Bois and Du Bois immediately applied for passports.
During her first visit to China in 1959, Graham Du Bois, alongside her husband W. E. B. Du Bois, was commemorated in China for their activism and commitment to Black liberation, as well as to liberation of all people of color across the globe. The Chinese Communist Party in 1959 commemorated W. E. B. Du Bois by publishing his book The Soul of Black Folk in Chinese languages. Graham Du Bois devoted her time in China to the women's struggle and sought to bridge ties between the proletarian struggle in China with the struggle of Black Americans. The People's Daily recognized her as a member of the World Peace Council and of the national committee for the Association of American-Soviet Friendship.
In part influenced by her experiences with Chinese state feminism, Graham Du Bois became increasingly political upon her return to the United States and became the editor of Freedomways magazine. She joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
In 1958, Graham Du Bois and her husband visited Ghana, where she spoke at the All-African Peoples' Conference (AAPC), an event held by 62 African National Liberation organizations where she delivered a speech titled "The Future of All-Africa lies in Socialism" where she stated "Africa, ancient Africa, has been called by the world and has lifted up her hands! Africa has no choice between private capitalism and socialism. The whole world, including capitalist countries, is moving toward socialism, inevitably, inexorably. You can choose between blocs of military alliance, you can choose between groups of political union; you cannot choose between socialism and private capitalism because private capitalism is doomed." In 1960 the Du Boises attended a ceremony in the Republic of Ghana honoring Kwame Nkrumah as the first president of the newly liberated country. Graham Du Bois and W. E. B. Du Bois later became citizens of Ghana in 1961.
Graham Du Bois attended the Second Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo in 1964 and consulted with Malcolm X on the efforts of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to get support for the issues inside the US among heads of state, the UN and national liberation movements. Graham Du Bois announced the start of a course on television screenwriting in Accra to create a group of writers for Ghana Television.
Living in Ghana in 1961, Graham Du Bois and her husband renounced their U.S. citizenship. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation "kept tabs" on their activities in Ghana.
Shortly after the death of her husband, Graham Du Bois became the director of Ghana Television on February 1, 1964, at the request of Kwame Nkrumah.
After Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown on February 24, 1966, Graham Du Bois briefly moved from Ghana to Tanzania and became close to Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, and acquired Tanzanian citizenship. In 1967, she moved to Cairo, Egypt, where her surviving son, David, was working as a journalist. In Cairo, Graham Du Bois continued writing, studied Arabic and become a supporter of Afrocentrism.
In 1968, Graham Du Bois then moved to China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. During this time, Graham Du Bois sided with the Chinese communists in the Sino-Soviet split. She had praised China's music programs in Shanghai and she joined the Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers. Graham Du Bois spent time in people's communes and with the Red Guards.