On the streets of Harlem have walked giants of the Black Experience with many firsts. Decades before Alain LeRoy Locke, the first African American to become a Rhodes Scholar, was crowned as the father of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois had earned a PhD from Harvard University as the first African American to do so in 1896. He had singly shown Blacks in positive light against the widespread racist subhuman portrayals in popular media in the Paris Exposition in 1900; co-founded the NAACP in 1909; started to serve as the editor of NAACP’s conscience rousing The Crisis; published the seminal Soul of Black Folks in 1909; participated in the leadership of the NAACP Silent Protest against lynching alongside his friend James Weldon Jones of Lift Every Voice fame in 1917; and taken his pioneering sociological analytical skills to France in 1919 to research the treatment of the Black soldier in WWI; and while in France organized the 1919 Pan African Congress. The 1945 version in Manchester, UK, which Du Bois chaired, would mark the motivation for young Africans to return home to fight for African independence from colonialism, culminating in Ghana’s independence in 1957- the first in Sub Saharan Africa.
The man who lived at 409 Edgecombe Avenue in Sugar Hill, Harlem would accept an invitation by Ghana’s then President Kwame Nkrumah in 1961 to relocate to Accra at age 93 to work on his cherished Encyclopedia Africana that would a la Black History Month to follow years later, highlight global Black achievements and history. Time was not on his side nor was a healthy body for an aged man. Prostate Cancer came calling. His dear country, the United States, from which Du Bois never renounced his citizenship, would not renew his passport for medical care in the USA. On August 27, 1963, he died in his bungalow in Accra in the company of his second wife, Shirley Graham. The bungalow exists, though not well-kept through the years, so does the tomb where Du Bois is buried, with the ashes of Shirley keeping watch.
In 2023, and then in 2026, the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation (WEBDBMF) signed agreements with the governments of Ghana to restore Du Bois’s bungalow, rebuild the mausoleum, and construct a magnificent campus that will include a Library and Museum, among other edifices worthy of the scholar-activist, civil rights pioneer, Pan Africanist, Harlem Renaissance leader, prolific author, and global rights activist. As Du Bois was larger-than-life, so is the vision monumental but doable. It will be the only place in the world with an exclusive Museum and Library Complex dedicated to the great African American. All hands, minds, and pockets are welcome. Ghanaians say- no little contribution is too small. The estimated construction cost of the complex is $60 million.
Today, when you visit the Du Bois Center in the Cantonments, Accra, you will be warmly welcomed to see the bungalow under restoration, and see young people trained by the US Library of Congress, working on the restoration of the delipidated 1,500 books brought to Ghana by Dr Du Bois. With the bungalow currently closed, you will be invited into a Screening Room to see what was and what is to come. You will be enveloped by the acclaimed architectural renderings of the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum and Library Complex. The $60 million will restore the bungalow; and construct the Mausoleum, Underground Parking, Museum, Library, Marcus Garvey Scholars Residence, Amphitheater, Restaurant and a Welcome Center. Please help. This must be done and done quickly. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois is buried with his ancestors as he wished. Our successive generations must raise him up in name to keep his cause of dignity and the extinguishment of the color line alive through education.
Contact: Japhet Aryiku (Executive Director- Harlem Resident)- ja@webdbmf.org – (+1 917-648-4652)
Kofi A. Boateng, PhD (COO/CFO- Formerly led an organization in Harlem
kofi.boateng@webdbmf.org – (+1 914-907-0633)