Socialists Hold DuBois Memorial: Nkrumah Praises Negro Leader

A Socialist Club memorial meeting in tribute to the late William E.B. DuBois '90 attracted nearly 200 students last night.

The meeting's three main speakers spoke of the Negro leader in glowing terms. Dr. Kweku Mensa Akude of the Ghanaian mission to the U.N. called DuBois "one of the giants of this century."

DuBois, who died last August 27 in Accra, Ghana at the age of 95, was the first Negro to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. A distinguished historian, sociologist, and poet, he was co-founder of the NAACP in 1909. He became a Ghanaian citizen three years ago.

The Socialist Club received messages in praise of DuBois from six national and international leaders. Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana, conveyed through the Ghanaian ambassador to the United States his "warm approval" of the meeting.

Other prominent figures, including Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; James Farmer, national chairman of the Congress for Racial Equality; and John Lewis, national chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, each sent a message praising DuBois as the founder of the contemporary Negro revolution.

Other speakers at the meetings were the Rev. William Howard Melish, a personal friend of DuBois, and Herbert Aptheker, an authority on Negro history, a Marxist scholar and the recipient of all DuBois' personal papers.