Here are the notable deaths on August 27 throughout the years:

William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) - An American civil rights activist, public intellectual, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar.  He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95.  His health had declined in 1962, and he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of ninety-five, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  At the March on Washington, prominent civil rights activist Roy Wilkins informed the hundreds of thousands of marchers and called for a moment of silence.  In 1992, the United States Postal Service honored him with his portrait on a postage stamp. (more…)