Shirley Graham Du Bois
Full name: Lola Shirley Graham, Jr.
Also known as: Shirley Graham Du Bois, Shirley Graham, Lola Shirley Bell Graham, Shirley Graham McCants, Mrs. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W. E. B. Du Bois)
Born: November 11, 1896 in Indianapolis, IN
Died: March 27, 1977 in Beijing, China
Occupation: author, playwright, composer
Notable works: Tom Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro (1932); Dust to Earth (1941); Dr. George Washington Carver, Scientist (1944); Paul Robeson, Citizen of the World (1946); There Once Was a Slave (1947); Zulu Heart (1974)We are a race of artists. What are we doing about it?
— "Towards an American Theatre," Arts Quarterly, October–December 1937
Associations: American Communist Party, Sojourners for Truth and Justice, Jefferson School of Social Science (JSSS), Progressive Party, World Peace Appeal
Honor and awards: Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1947), Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction [for Your Most Humble Servant] (1950), speaker at Yale’s 1970 Chubb Conference on the Black Woman, honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts (1973)
