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49 Years On: Remembering Shirley Graham Du Bois Beyond the Shadow of History
History often remembers Shirley Graham Du Bois as the wife of W.E.B. Du Bois. But she was never just that. Today, March 27, 2026 marks 49 years since her passing.
Long before her name became permanently linked to one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century, Shirley Graham Du Bois had already established herself as a formidable force in her own right. She was a writer, a composer, a playwright, and a political thinker whose work engaged deeply with questions of race, identity, and liberation.Yet, like many women in history, her story has often been told in relation to someone else.
It is a familiar pattern. Proximity to greatness becomes a substitute for recognition. But in Shirley’s case, that framing does her a disservice. She was not adjacent to history. She was actively shaping it.
Before she ever became Mrs. Du Bois, she was Shirley Graham. A woman navigating and challenging the cultural and political landscapes of her time. Her work in theatre and music was not simply artistic expression. It was a deliberate intervention. Through her plays and compositions, she explored Black life with urgency and depth, insisting on narratives that were often ignored or suppressed.
Art, for her, was not separate from activism. It was one of its most powerful forms. She understood that culture could move people in ways that politics alone could not. And so she used it, strategically and unapologetically, to advance a broader vision of Black dignity and self-definition. She did not wait to be invited into conversations. She created them.
What makes her story even more compelling is not only who she was, but the choices she made. At a time when Africa was still emerging from the shadows of colonial rule, when many in the diaspora viewed the continent through distance or uncertainty, Shirley Graham Du Bois made a deliberate decision to align her life with Africa’s future.
Together with her husband, and within the wider vision of leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, she saw in Ghana something far greater than geography. She saw possibility. Ghana, newly independent and filled with ambition, represented a bold experiment in Black self-governance and cultural renewal. It was a place where history could be rewritten by those who lived it. For Shirley Graham Du Bois, this was not symbolic. It was personal. Ghana was not where she ended up. It was where she believed the future was.
In choosing Ghana, she became part of a broader movement that connected Africa to its diaspora in a deeply intentional way. Intellectuals, artists, and activists were reimagining identity, belonging, and purpose across borders.
Within this space, she lived, worked, and contributed to a growing cultural and intellectual energy that defined Ghana in its early post-independence years. And then, as life would have it, she remained. Today, she rests in Ghana. A country she chose at a defining moment in history.
At the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, her story lives on. Visitors walk the grounds, observe the mausoleum, and encounter the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois in ways that are both educational and reflective.
As the institution mandated to manage, preserve, and transform this historic site, the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation carries a responsibility that goes beyond conservation. It is a responsibility to tell the full story, while advancing a vision to transform the Centre into a world-class museum, research, and cultural complex that reflects the global significance of both W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois.
And within that story, Shirley Graham Du Bois must be seen. She chose Ghana. She lived here. She rests here. Yet how often do we remember her not as an extension of someone else’s legacy, but as a force in her own right?
In our efforts to honour great men, history has sometimes asked women to stand just slightly out of frame. Their contributions remain, but their visibility fades. Shirley’s story challenges that pattern. It asks us to reconsider how we remember, how we tell stories, and how we assign significance. Because to remember her fully is not to diminish anyone else. It is to complete the story.
There is also something deeply relevant about her decision to choose Ghana. In a time where conversations about identity, belonging, and diaspora continue to evolve, her life offers a perspective that feels both historical and immediate. She did not approach Africa as an abstract idea or a distant origin. She approached it as a living, evolving space. A place where she could belong, contribute, and help shape the future.
That distinction matters. It reframes Ghana not simply as a place of heritage, but as a place of purpose. It reinforces the idea that the relationship between Africa and its diaspora is not static. It is dynamic, intentional, and continually being shaped by those who choose it.
Shirley Graham Du Bois chose it. To remember her is not simply an act of tribute. It is an act of recognition. It is to acknowledge a woman who understood, perhaps earlier than many, that Africa was not only a point of origin, but a place of possibility. It is to recognise her as a cultural force, a political thinker, and a Pan-Africanist whose life extended far beyond any single title.
And it is to ask ourselves whether we have told her story with the fullness it deserves. The question is no longer who Shirley Graham Du Bois was. History has already answered that. The question now is whether we are prepared to remember her as she truly was. Not in the shadow of another name, but in the clarity of her own. Because she did not simply accompany history. She helped shape it. And she chose Ghana as the place to do so.
By: Terry Mingle
PR and Communications Specialist
W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation
Email: terry.mingle@webdbmf.org
THE journalist is a hunter. He goes after human rats and grasscutters personified, matters about whom he can salt and spice and present as news. The fatter and juicier the catch, the better, because sensation is essentially our cup of tea.
Our job is to sell news and sell it in grand style.
Because the journalist is a hunter and is created with a special kind of nose for sniffing out news, he is usually not welcome in many places. He is seen as someone who has been born to make people uncomfortable.
The problem is that some people don’t want things written about them even if it is promotional and favourable. When it entails publishing their pictures alongside the story, they are doubly scared.
“Please, don’t use my picture. People will think I’ve got money and come for loan,” someone told me.
Anyhow, journalists are seen as intruders, undesirables, born with plenty of okro in the mouth; maybe some also in the nose. Some of my friends are no longer too close because they fear I’d give them full coverage in the Sikaman Palava column. Ha ha ha! What a funny world!
Well, people like my Uncle, Sir Kofi Jogolo, my former classmate and born-mathematician, Kwame Korkorti, and ex-football star cum human-salamander Kofi Kokotako don’t mind featuring in the hilarious inches of this column. Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty is one personality who has to be mentioned in this palaver.
These are people who are going to live long, primarily because they see the world as one big ball of fun. When Kwame Korkorti was told that his dear mother was dead at home, he smiled and asked the bearer of the message whether his mother had cooked the afternoon meal before claiming she was dead. Until her death, Korkorti ate his lunch at his mother’s end.
When my Uncle Kofi Jogolo was picked and lost 1,500 dollars and a good amount of Sikaman currency, he didn’t lament the loss. Instead he was amused. In fact, he was almost glad about it, because he grinned from ear to ear, stroked his delicate moustache and congratulated the thief, adding that “He is smarter than I am.” Yeah, Jogolo is the man who employs a Swedish barber to trim his moustache.
And when Kofi Kokotako was unemployed and was nearly hit by an articulated truck, he called the driver a fool. “The idiot should have killed me,” he said to me. “Didn’t he know I was unemployed and suffering?”
Today, Kokotako is employed as a Reverend and is not doing badly at all. Thanks to the regular silver collection.
And what about Kofi Owuo, the celebrated poor man. His wife left him not because he was poor, but because he swore in front of her that he would never prosper.
The following dawn the wife packed bag and baggage and went back to her parents and told them all about her husband’s alliance with poverty. Her parents were bewildered and called the alliance unholy. They had no option than to send back Owuo’s drinks to end the marriage.
Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty did not contest the issue. He was more engrossed thinking about how to become poorer than to contest what he called a frivolous matter. The wife could go to hell, he said. These are people longevity smiles upon. Nothing worries them.
Getting back to talking about journalists. I’d say that anywhere there is journalism, the issue of press freedom is not too far away. Is the press free? That’s one question foreigners want answer to when they are on visit.
Well, journalists celebrate a yearly WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY to drum home the idea of press freedom as a very important thing in the practice of journalism.
This year’s was celebrated almost a fortnight ago but people didn’t see much of us because we are normally not good celebrants. We should have mounted a float to roam the entire capital, dancing asaboni to brass band music just like PTC did recently.
Although journalists are known to be very good dancers because they walk very much, on that day, they were all busy writing. It was the Minister of Information, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi who saved the day by addressing a forum organised to mark the day.
He is a man I’ve always admired since his radical university days. He spoke much on press freedom, cautioning the press not to abuse the freedom granted by the Fourth Republican constitution, but to use it for the progress of society.
Well, press freedom has been defined by many journalists as the freedom to ‘write nonsense’. This definition is not quite accurate. I asked one staff reporter to define press freedom. It took him fifteen minutes to put up something.
“Press freedom is the freedom that is enjoyed by the press that enables journalists to publish or broadcast any kind of material so long as it is absolutely true, is not libelous and slanderous, and is not against the national interest.”
I gave him eight out of 10, a straight A. I guess every journalist is old enough to know that certain things he or she writes is for or against the national interest. We certainly must guard against writing against the national interest; that is very important.
There is also the question of criticising government. The government can be criticized, so long as the criticisms are genuine and the President and his ministers are not insulted and called names. Let us criticize, but let us do it decently so that the journalistic profession can be revered, and its nobility acknowledged. We are not war mongers, are we?
One area in which journalists are not spoken well of is the complaint that they misquote people. Journalists sometimes misquote people, but in four out of five complaints it turns out that nobody is misquoted after all.
When we interview people they say things unreservedly and we publish unreservedly. When the publication is out and their friends or superiors read it and accuse them of having said too much to the press, then they start claiming they were misquoted.
We have encountered these ‘misquotation palaver’ every now and then and reporters are usually accused of this transgression. However, when they bring out their note-books or recorders, it is realised that they wrote nothing out of the way. “Book no lie”.
My advice to people who deal with the press is that if they do not want anything written, they shouldn’t say it. What they want to say is OFF-RECORD, then of course, there is no reason to say it. When you say it, you’re taking a risk. In that instance, you can’t also claim to have been misquoted or words put into your mouth.
And it isn’t every journalist who would be circumspect in matters that are supposed to be off-record, because journalists often want to be as sensational as possible to make their stories saleable. So say just what you want to see published and you won’t later regret it and claim you were misquoted.
Well, I’m not holding brief for journalists, because a few of us are notorious for colouring our reports sometimes sand-papering the words so much that they look very bright in front of readers.
As I once said, when the police tells one such notorious pressman that the thief stole a brown goat, the pressman would want to know whether the goat was bearded. Of course, the police would say ‘Yes’.
However, in the press report, it appears, “A gang of notorious goat-thieves were apprehended in the early hours of yesterday. In the car in which they were riding was a brownish-red goat having a long beard. Upon further examination, it was realised that the goat also had a greyish moustache.”
When the story appears, the police are naturally disturbed. A single thief turns out to be a gang of thieves. The goat also becomes a chameleon and changes colour to brownish-red. And a moustacheless goat overnight wears a greyish moustache whether you like it or not. Luckily the journalist does not add that the moustache was trimmed by a Swedish barber.
Yes, we have a few of such mischief-creating, chronically notorious journalists. But they are one in a hundred. In any case, we make the world. And we shall always do our best to make it a happy place to live in.
This article was first publish on Saturday, May, 20, 1995
When I hear of people who are of the opinion that they cannot make it in life unless they travel abroad, l become sad.
Whenever I see on TV, news of people, that is migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to cross to Europe, l become filled with sadness and then anger.
The underlying factor is desperation born out of loss of hope, in life. When an individual tends to believe that his only hope of making it in life is to travel abroad, the risk of dying at sea, does not deter him or her.
The role of some pastors on shaping the mindset of people, especially the youth, leaves much to be desired. You hear them declaring on various media platforms how they can pray for you to get a visa to travel abroad, instead of encouraging them to find something to do to improve their lives as the Bible teaches that God will bless the work of their hands.
The GREATER WORKS CONFERENCE is geared towards renewing the minds of people with a specific focus on people of African descent to rid themselves of the negative perception of lack of capacity to excel in life.
Pastor Mensa Otabil believes that every human being, no matter the skin colour, was created in the exact image of God and therefore has the capacity to do exploits.
The whiteman was not created in the image of God while the Blackman was created in the image of something other than God. The Black person therefore can achieve whatever the whiteman can achieve.
The development in terms of industrialisation that is lacking which has generated unemployment for the youth, is due to lack of effective leadership. The lack of moral integrity in society, is what is causing the lack of job opportunities, which is as a result of corrupt acts which drive away private investment.
A culture of inferiority complex exists which needs to be dealt with, so the African can develop the self worth necessary for personal development which can then result in capacity deployment to avhieve personal goals.
Success in life begins with the individual’s recognition that he or she is capable of achieving the dreams he or she has conceived in his or her mind. The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding according to Proverbs 9:10.
Christianity was the driving force behind the development of Europe because no society can sustain development without high moral values. GREATER WORKS therefore is a deliberate project to shape the minds of people, especially the youth, who will become the leaders of our future, to prioritise morality in their daily lives.
This is the only way to see a massive transformation in every aspect of our lives as Ghanaians and Africans in Ghana and the rest of the continent.
Since the inception of the GREATOR WORKS CONFERENCE, it has made a lot of impact in the lives of many people from the youth up to the senior citizens level. I recall the testimony of a church member who was motivated and pursued higher education and became one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in this country. Year after year, the impact of the conference has been enormous and lives in Ghana and across the continent, are being transformed.
Black people have started regaining their self confidence and the youth have started getting into areas that previously were considered out of bounds. At a personal level, certain ideas that some years ago, l would have not dreamt about suddenly has become realistic dreams.
The Christian lifestyle has impacted on my children and those close to me. Mindset change starts with one individual, then another and then gradually it spreads like a viral infection until a critical mass is attained and them a massive impact. There is hope for the future.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
