Shirley Graham

Shirley Graham (born Lola Shirley Graham Jr.) was an American writer, playwright, composer, and activist born in 1896 in Indianapolis, Indiana. She gained acclaim for her opera Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro (1932), numerous plays, and biographies of prominent African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Paul Robeson, and Phillis Wheatley, often aimed at young readers, winning awards like the Messner Prize and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Later marrying W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951, she became involved in global Pan-African and socialist activism, directing Ghana Television and authoring works on African leaders until her death in 1977.