Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois

One of the most intriguing activists and artists of the twentieth century, Shirley Graham Du Bois also remains one of the least studied and understood. In Race Woman, Gerald Horne draws a revealing portrait of this controvertial figure who championed the civil rights movement in America, the liberation struggles in Africa and the socialist struggles in Maoist China. Through careful analysis and use of personal correspondence, interviews, and previously unexamined documents, Horne explores her work as a Harlem Renaissance playwright, biographer, composer, teacher, novelist, Left political activist, advisor and inspiration, who was a powerful historical actor.

Boston Sunday Globe

Horne is the first biographer to grant Shirley Graham DuBois her due Race Woman gives a good sense of Shirley Graham's adventurousness, courage, unconventionality, and talent Where Horne shines is with the historical background. He has a first-rate grasp of international politics during the Cold War. If his book sheds valuable light on an extraordinary African-American woman, it sheds stronger light on the exciting, perilous times in which she lived.

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston. His books include Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois and Race War!: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (both available from NYU Press).