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2026-09-17T12:00:00+00:00 Zend_Feed_Writer https://amhersthistoric.org/ Amherst Historic https://amhersthistoric.org 2014-12-06T03:40:24+00:00 2021-04-22T18:26:07+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/5 Katherine Garland (UMass Public History) and edited by Janet Marquardt (Amherst Historical Commission) "We are a race of artists. What are we doing about it?" – Shirley Graham Du Bois, "Towards an American Theatre," Arts Quarterly, Oct–Dec 1937 Life  Although some may associate Shirley Graham Du Bois with her husband, the noted civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, she made her own profound legacy. Born on November 11, 1896 in Indianapolis, Shirley Graham learned about civil rights activism early on from her father, but her career did not initially focus on activism. After a brief marriage to Shadrack T. McCann, who died a few years into their marriage, Graham studied music at Howard University and Oberlin College. During this time, she produced an opera and wrote plays, which led to her to become the director of the African American division of the Chicago Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in 1936. Graham did not forget her early civil rights ideals, though, and joined the New York branch of the NAACP in the 1940s where she met W. E. B. Du Bois. The couple married in 1951 after the death of his first wife. Together, they joined the Communist Party and moved to Ghana in 1961. After her husband’s death in 1963, Graham DuBois traveled around the world; banned from the United States for a time due to her far-left beliefs. Graham Du Bois donated her husband’s papers to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in exchange for $150,000 and served there as a visiting lecturer for a year. The UMass library and Department of Afro-American Studies are both named for W. E. B. Du Bois. Graham Du Bois moved to China in 1976 and died of cancer a year later.  Literary Legacy Shirley Graham Du Bois' writing career spanned from 1932 to 1975 and included six plays and fourteen books. She won several prestigious awards and fellowships including the Rosenwald Fellowship in 1939, Julius Messner Award in 1946, Aisfiled-Wolf Award in 1949, Guggenheim Fellowship and National Institute of Arts and Letters Award in 1950. Beginning in 1944, Graham Du Bois began to write biographies of prominent African- and Native- Americans for young adults, including figures such as George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatley, Pocahontas, and Booker T. Washington. She hoped that her sympathetic portraits would uplift and inspire American youth.  House  While teaching at Amherst in the 1970s, Graham Du Bois lived at The Boltwood Inn (then called The Amherst Inn, later The Lord Jeffery Inn). This hotel, near the grounds of the Amherst Commons, has been in operation since 1926 and is owned and operated by an affiliate of Amherst College. Directions to Next Stop Walk South .01 miles on Boltwood Avenue to College Street. Turn west for 250 feet until Pleasant Street. Walk south .02 miles to 249 S. Pleasant Street. Additional Resources To learn more about Shirley Graham Du Bois, check out the UMass Library's website: http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:du_bois_shirley_graham  To do your own research on Shirley Graham Du Bois, check out her papers at the Harvard University Library: http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00211 For more (including 4 images), view the original article.