View from Accra, Ghana: Honouring W.E.B DuBois — A revered Historian and Pan-Africanist
Ghana was one of the countries I had always wanted to visit owing to its rich history of powerful Kings with their golden stools, its role in the trans-Atlantic trade, my love for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s founding father and Pan-Africanist, and Dr. W.E.B DuBois, a pre-eminent Africanist and Pan-Africanist of the twentieth century.
With my upcoming birthday being in tandem with my visit to this Coastal African Country popularly known as the Gateway to Africa, there was no better gift I could ask for. For the benefit of non-geographers and non-historians, Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast), the first country to gain its independence in 1957, is located just off the coast of Atlantic Ocean, and on the edge of the edge of the Gulf of Guinea. The country borders Côte d’Ivoire, to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo, to the east. I know some of you are probably asking “but where is Nigeria?” Well, despite the eternal rivalry and the endless football and Jollof rice banter between them, these two countries do not even share a border to begin with (don’t come for me ‘coz I dey mention you oo, but I no sabi why you dey fight 😂).
Moving on, with a population of over 30 million people, Ghana boasts of over 80 languages spoken by various ethnic groups, though English is its official language.
After I was done and dusted with my presentation at a conference I was speaking at, an old friend –Wisdom Addo, offered to pick me up and drive me around Accra. Wisdom and I had met years back at a retreat in Thailand, and kept in touch all through the years. Wisdom drove me through a neighbourhood with diplomatic missions, and Jubilee House, Ghana’s presidential palace that doubles as a residence and office to the President of Ghana.
Once again, I did not have sufficient time since my flight back home was later in the evening, so I had to do a quick thinking and make a tough choice between visiting Kwameh Nkurumah Memorial Park, Black Star Square alternatively known as the Independence Square, the famous Makola market — Accra’s largest open-air market, and The W.E.B DuBois Centre — a mausoleum to commemorate the late W.E.B DuBois.
As the headline already hinted, W.E.B DuBois mausoleum it was! My main reason being that besides Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey, DuBois is one of the Pan-Africanists, and authors I hold in high regard. Having learnt about him and his contribution to Pan-Africanism in my history class in high school, there was no way I was not going to honour him, especially that he opted for a Ghanaian citizenship — a true son of Africa, a first to have chosen 1961 as his year of return to motherland!
If you are an ardent follower of Black History, you may already know that DuBois was among prominent African-American writers like Booker T. Washington, Carter G. Woodson — the father of Black History Month, in the 19th and 20th centuries epoch.
Remarkably, he was the first African-American to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, in reference to which, he reportedly uttered, “The honor, I assure you, was Harvard’s.” Quite some shade there!
DuBois’ tireless fight for racial equality ended up making him one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and The Crisis — the official magazine of the NAACP founded in 1910.
Located just few meters from the US Embassy and close to Ghana International School, The W.E. B. DuBois Centre for Pan-African Culture consists of a mausoleum which contains memorabilia and his personal library. Among the collections is DuBois’ personal effects as well as his personal library, photographs, archives, his academic awards, his tomb as well as the ashes of his wife — Mrs. Shirley Graham Du Bois, and the house in which he lived in prior to his death on the eve of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
W.E.B DuBois was born in 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Mary Silvina Burghardt, a domestic worker, and Alfred Du Bois, a Haitian immigrant and barber.
DuBois’ incessant criticism of the historical fragility of American democracy, and his alignment with the American Communist Party got him under the FBI’s radar.
According to my guide interning here, DuBois would be rendered stateless in in 1961, when the U.S State Department effectively cancelled his citizenship. This move prompted him to accept Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah’s invitation to take up Ghanaian citizenship and move to Accra. Du Bois gladly accepted the invitation in the same year and moved to Accra at the age of 93, where he and his wife were accorded a comfortable seven-room home on an acre of property by the state.
While here, Du Bois worked on the Encyclopedia Africana project, a project he left unfinished at the time of his death just two years after his arrival on these premises. The Encyclopedia Africana project was later completed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, a historian (a frequent visitor to Kenya) and Anthony Appiah, and was eventually published in 1999.
The Encyclopedia factually details the history and culture of people of African descent.
Being at the mausoleum of a legendary intellect I have written about, and whose works have largely influenced my views on race relations and social justice, was indeed a memorable birthday gift.
Back home, Dubois Road in Nairobi, named after W.E.B DuBois, speaks volumes on why Pan-Africanists of the mid-twentieth century admired this great intellect and his anti-colonial activism.
As my friend Wisdom dropped me off at the airport, I, without a shadow of doubt, ruled that historians were right to depict DuBois the way they did. He was indeed the most important Black intellectual of his time, and worth of an ally to have in the Pan-Africanism movement.
R.I.P Dr. W.E.B DuBois.
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