W.E.B. Du Bois, Wikipedia.

March 27, 2025, marked 48 years since the death of Shirley Graham DuBois, the prominent African American writer, scholar, and social activist. She was the widow of the prolific academic W.E.B. Du Bois. As her legacy as an advocate for racial equality, Pan-Africanism, and social justice continues, it’s important to reflect on her substantial role in the shaping of the political landscape, particularly her resisting the United States Justice Department, who on May 5, 1970 denied her entry into the country citing the McCarran-Walter Act. This history provides an antecedent to the modern-day and current struggles associated with the U.S. visa system, especially when it involves politically marginalized people involved in contentious politics.

DuBois, a brilliant playwright and artist, was active in the international struggle for racial equality. After the death of her husband in 1963, she continued to “loudly challenge anticommunism” and argued for African liberation and joined in the fight against colonialism and imperialism. She founded the journal Freedomways as its first general editor and was particularly vocal about the detriments of American foreign policy, along with the mistreatment of black people. Having lived in Ghana from 1961-1966, she became a globally prominent figure and campaigned for Pan-Africanism and spoke out against neo-colonialism and US foreign interventions, particularly in both Vietnam and Africa.

Shirley DuBois’s history intersects with the broader political climate of the 1960s and 70s when the U.S. government became increasingly concerned with dissent and anti-imperialist movements and activities. In 1970, after spending several years in Africa, DuBois sought to return to the United States after receiving an invitation to visit Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee as noted by historian Gerald Horne in Race Woman. The United States Justice Department overruled the State Department and denied her entry however, citing concerns over her political beliefs, particularly her anti-imperialist work and her condemnations of state violence and war. The........

© CounterPunch