Shirley Graham Du Bois

The first scholarly collection devoted to Shirley Graham Du Bois and her legacy as an artist and activist

Shirley Graham Du Bois centers her cultural, intellectual, and political significance as a Black radical woman during the twentieth century. The volume traces Graham Du Bois’s travels across the United States and around the world to places like France, Ghana, Egypt, China, and Russia. Contributors not only chronicle her creativity as a theatrical composer, novelist, journalist, and public intellectual but also present the wide range of her political impact as a civil rights and radical peace activist, international feminist, Black nationalist, socialist, and Pan-Africanist.

While prevailing accounts of Graham Du Bois’s life often emphasize her significance in relation to the prominent men with whom she associated, including her husband W.E.B. Du Bois, the essays in this volume engage with her thought on her own terms and in her own voice. Contributors examine how African and African American culture infused her artistry as a musician, dramatist, editor, and author of historical biographies; and they analyze how her creative intellect shaped the evolution of her expansive, radical political commitments across the global Black freedom struggle.

The first scholarly collection devoted to Shirley Graham Du Bois, the book explores key moments in her life, revealing the critical importance of her endeavors as an artist, her efforts as an activist, and her productivity as an author across the African Diaspora. Taken together, the essays highlight the Black radical legacy of liberation that Shirley Graham Du Bois left behind while underscoring the vitality of her international voice in freedom movements of Black and oppressed populations across the globe.

Contributors: Bettina Aptheker, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Lauren Eglen, Mjiba Frehiwot, Tsitsi Jaji, Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, Denise Lynn, Phillip Luke Sinitiere.