From Brooklyn to Ghana: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rev. William Howard Melish

Please join us in-person in the sanctuary at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church and Pro-Cathedral (157 Montague Street) or watch the livestream on YouTube.

You are invited to join the panel discussion featuring Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Ph.D., Professor of History at College of Biblical Studies and Senior Research Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the Rev. Craig D. Townsend, Ph.D., Associate for Faith Formation at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church and Historian in Residence for Racial Justice for the Diocese of Long Island; and Japhet Aryiku, Executive Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Museum Foundation.

Learn more about our panelists under "Lineup" below.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s inauguration of Negro History Week in the 1950s at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, now St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church and Pro-Cathedral in Brooklyn Heights, began through a mutual admiration of and friendship with the Rev. William Howard Melish, the last priest-in-charge of Holy Trinity before repression against Melish’s peace activities during the McCarthy era shut it down.

Both Du Bois and Melish—as well as their spouses Shirley Graham Du Bois and Mary Jane Melish—found common ground in supporting peace work and the liberation of Black and oppressed peoples in the US and across the world. Significantly, Du Bois’s Negro History Week lectures at Holy Trinity in the 1950s always emphasized his global, Africa-centered vision for racial and economic justice.

This year’s program focuses on historical connections between Brooklyn and Ghana and the ongoing legacy of Du Bois’s and Melish’s civil rights activism. A panel of experts will trace the movement of W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois, from their married years in Brooklyn Heights (31 Grace Court) to his final years in Accra, Ghana, as editor of the Encyclopedia Africana. Panelists will also explore Melish’s engagement with Ghana and its first president Kwame Nkrumah, in light of Du Bois’s request, in his will, to have Melish preach and preside at his funeral in Accra in September 1963.

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