A PROJECT FOR THE AGES
By Daniel Rose
New York City Real Estate Developer and Philanthropist
Dr. Du Bois was a towering scholar, writer, and civil-rights leader who devoted his life to racial justice, education, political equality, and human dignity. As a founder of the NAACP and editor of The Crisis, he opposed lynching and segregation, championed women’s rights and the Harlem Renaissance, and condemned Nazi persecution of Jewish people.
A committed Pan-Africanist, Dr. Du Bois moved to Ghana in 1961 at the age of 93 at the invitation of the first President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, accompanied by his beloved wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, to launch the Encyclopedia Africana project. He died in Accra on August 27, 1963, at the age of 95. The following day, a quarter of a million people gathered for the historic March on Washington, honoring his passing with a moment of silence. Ghana embraced Dr. Du Bois as a son of both Africa and America and gave him a State Funeral befitting a Head of State.
In 1985, under the leadership of Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, the Government of Ghana dedicated the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture to honor his legacy. In time, the Centre and its collections of books, papers, and academic regalia came to require restoration and preservation.
I have been honored to participate in discussions with Ghanaian Government officials, including two Presidents, John Mahama and Nana Akufo-Addo, about preserving Dr. and Mrs. Du Bois’ resting place and redeveloping that historic site. In 2019, along with my friends, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kwame Anthony Appiah, Wole Soyinka, Michael Morand, and my niece Dr. Deborah Rose, we founded the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation, a New York-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to spearhead the drive to redevelop the Du Bois Centre in Accra, Ghana. Having signed an Agreement with the government of Ghana in January 2026, the Foundation, under the leadership of its formidable Ghanaian American Executive Director, Mr. Japhet Aryiku, is now proceeding with its plans to redevelop the Centre into a first-class Museum and Library Complex honoring Dr. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois.
Dr. Du Bois chose Ghana as the final home for his life and legacy. It is therefore profoundly fitting that Accra should become the home of an institution dedicated not merely to preserving his memory, but to advancing the ideas, scholarship, and global conversations to which he devoted his life. The proposed Museum and Library Complex in Accra can become precisely such a place: a living institution where archives, scholarship, technology, education, culture, and public engagement come together. Dr. Du Bois was not simply one of the most consequential intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a scholar whose life and work crossed continents, disciplines, and generations.
The proposed Museum/Library complex will provide scholars with access to important historical resources, a platform for African and diasporic scholars to meet, research, collaborate, and produce new knowledge. It will allow students to encounter Du Bois not merely as a figure in a textbook, but as a thinker whose questions remain relevant to their own lives. And through digital technologies, it can make the intellectual legacy of Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois accessible to audiences far beyond Ghana.
With its future programming, it will become an intellectual institution for the future, a place where memory becomes scholarship, scholarship becomes education, and education inspires the next generation. If we do this properly, a child who has not yet been born could walk through the doors of the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum/Library Complex many decades from now and discover something that changes his or her understanding of Africa, America, and the world.
I have worked on many philanthropic projects in my lifetime in the United States, Europe, and in Israel, and I must say nothing compares with this noble project in Accra, Ghana, to honor the legacy of Dr. Du Bois and Shirley Graham. At age 97, I have lived 2 years longer than the great Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, who died in 1963 at the age of 95, and I remain a great admirer of his works, accomplishments, and ideals. He was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard University, in 1895. He established himself as the Father of American Scientific Sociology with his seminal study, The Philadelphia Negro. He was a historian who challenged the prevailing false narrative of Black failure during the Reconstruction Period with his extensively researched book, Black Reconstruction in America. He was a philosopher who challenged the conscience of the world with The Souls of Black Folk, in which he made the sweeping declaration: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea…” That color-line problem is still with us today, and this Museum/Library complex might someday find answers for the darker and lighter races of men and women in the world to live, work and play together in peace and harmony.
As a double recipient of the Du Bois Medal Award, I could not be happier to endorse this noble project.
Please help us with your generous tax-deductible donations at the website: www.webdbmf.org and/or contact the Executive Director, Mr. Japhet Aryiku, at +1 917-648-4652 (japhet@webdbmf.org).
About the Author
Daniel Rose is one of New York City’s most respected real estate developers and philanthropists. A student at Yale University, at the outbreak of the Korean War he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, in which he served in military intelligence as a Russian affairs analyst. After the war, he joined Rose Associates, Inc., the family real estate firm. In 1989 he founded the Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF), which has guided thousands of young Harlem students toward college and professional careers, an investment in young minds that echoes Du Bois’s lifelong faith in education as the path to freedom. A two-time recipient of the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, he joined Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kwame Anthony Appiah, and others in 2019 to found the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation. Now 97, he counts the transformation of Du Bois’s final home in Accra into a world-class Museum and Library Complex as the most meaningful philanthropic work of his long life.
Help Build the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum & Library
Full Layout of the Museum
The W.E.B. Du Bois Museum & Library Complex will rise on nearly four acres at the Du Bois Centre in Cantonments, Accra: a restored Bungalow, a new Mausoleum, a Museum, a Library, a Welcome Center, an Amphitheater, underground parking and a 50-room Scholars Residence. Renderings and floor plans courtesy of the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation.
