W.E.B. Du Bois spent the end of his life in Ghana, became a citizen and was given a state funeral in Accra.
His final chapter shows why independent Ghana became a centre of Black intellectual and political life.
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The scholar who came to die in Accra
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The scholar who came to die in Accra
W.E.B. Du Bois had spent decades writing, organising and arguing about race, colonialism and the political future of people of African descent. In 1961, Kwame Nkrumah invited him to live in Accra and work on the Encyclopedia Africana, a project intended to gather African history and knowledge on its own terms.
Du Bois became a Ghanaian citizen in 1963. He died in Accra later that year, received a state funeral and was buried there. The move was not just a personal relocation. It connected an African American intellectual’s lifelong Pan-African work to a newly independent African state trying to define its place in the world.
His story also gives visitors a different way to think about return. Ghana was not simply a destination for ancestry tourism. It became a place where ideas, political projects and Black internationalism could meet. The Du Bois Centre in Accra makes that history visible, but the larger question remains alive: what does it mean for a country to become a home for a global movement?
If you visit Ghana. The W.E.B. Du Bois Centre in Accra offers a physical starting point for exploring Ghana’s Pan-African connections.
W.E.B. Du Bois had spent decades writing, organising and arguing about race, colonialism and the political future of people of African descent. In 1961, Kwame Nkrumah invited him to live in Accra and work on the Encyclopedia Africana, a project intended to gather African history and knowledge on its own terms.
Du Bois became a Ghanaian citizen in 1963. He died in Accra later that year, received a state funeral and was buried there. The move was not just a personal relocation. It connected an African American intellectual’s lifelong Pan-African work to a newly independent African state trying to define its place in the world.
His story also gives visitors a different way to think about return. Ghana was not simply a destination for ancestry tourism. It became a place where ideas, political projects and Black internationalism could meet. The Du Bois Centre in Accra makes that history visible, but the larger question remains alive: what does it mean for a country to become a home for a global movement?