Shirley Graham Du Bois - Biography

Biography

She was born Lola Shirley Graham in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1896, as the only daughter among six children. She often gave her age as up to ten years younger. Her father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister, and the family moved often. 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 in 1925. They divorced in 1927. (In her memoir, she asserted that she was widowed by 1925.) In 1926, Graham moved to Paris, France to study music composition at the Sorbonne. She thought that this education 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 started in 1931 at Oberlin College as an advanced student and, after earning her B.A. in 1934, went on to do graduate work in music, completing a master's degree in 1935. As the Great Depression was on, she was glad to get work with the Federal Theater Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. She did directing, writing musical scores and other associated work.

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.

She and Du Bois married in 1951, the second marriage for both. She was 54 years old; he was 83. They later emigrated to Ghana, where they received citizenship in 1961 and he died in 1963. In 1967, she was forced to leave after a military-led coup d'etat, and moved to Cairo, Egypt, where she continued writing. Her surviving son David Graham Du Bois accompanied her and worked as a journalist.

She died of breast cancer on March 27, 1977 in Beijing, China, where she had gone for treatment.