1977 — Shirley Graham Du Bois Dies

On March 27, 1977, Shirley Graham Du Bois died in Beijing at the age of eighty, an author, composer, and Pan-Africanist who had made her home on the continent. She married W. E. B. Du Bois, followed him to Ghana, and became the first director of Ghana Television under Kwame Nkrumah.

Her opera Tom Tom had once drawn ten thousand people to a Cleveland stage. At her funeral, China honored her as a hero while Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia laid memorial wreaths. An American artist who chose Africa as home was mourned on three continents, her life a bridge between them.