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• 1 2019-03-12T23:56:45+00:00 June - Archived Posts 9 plain published 2019-08-27T02:03:05+00:00
  Click on date to view post:
  June 1, 1957: Dollree Mapp’s arrest for possessing obscene books leads to landmark case regarding police search and seizure, reported in Cleveland Call and Post.

  June 2, 1945: Black newspaper executives meet with President Truman, reported in Norfolk Journal and Guide.

  June 3, 1921: Tulsa Race Massacre reported in Baltimore Afro-American.

  June 4, 1904: Indianapolis Freeman mourns the death of composer Antonin Dvorak. Guest post by Lucy Caplan, PhD candidate in American Studies and African-American Studies at Yale University.

  June 5, 1952: Fultz Quadruplets in Los Angeles Sentinel.

  June 6, 1964: Kool cigarettes advertisement in Baltimore Afro-American.

  June 7, 1941: Brooklyn branch of NAACP launches membership drive, led by Ella Baker.

  June 8, 2002: Multi-part series, “Blacks on White Campuses,” by Hazel Trice Edney in Pittsburgh Courier.

  June 9, 1968: Los Angeles Sentinel reports on assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

  June 10, 1965: Arthur Ashe leads UCLA into NCAA tennis tournament, reported in Los Angeles Sentinel.

  June 11, 1921: Lafayette Players’ production of “Parlor, Bedroom & Bath,” starring Cleo Desmond and Andrew Bishop, advertised in Philadelphia Tribune.

  June 12, 1955: C.L. Franklin’s gospel gathering advertised in Atlanta Daily World.

  June 13, 1967: Loving v. Virginia, Supreme Court case on overturning state bans on interracial marriage, reported in Chicago Defender.

  June 14, 1986: “Remember Soweto” and “End Apartheid” march, reported in New York Amsterdam News.

  June 15, 1967: Thurgood Marshall nominated for U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson, reported in Los Angeles Sentinel.

  June 16, 1934: W. E. B. DuBois resigns from the NAACP and The Crisis, reported in Cleveland Call and Post.

  June 17, 1948: Los Angeles Sentinel on murder case involving Ruth Mae Foster and Virginia Louise Ford.

  June 18, 1949: Juneteenth in the Chicago Defender.

  June 19, 1954: Negro Traveler’s Green Book promoted in New York Amsterdam News.

  June 20, 1935: Full page advertisement for Crosley electric refrigerators in Cleveland Call and Post.

  June 21, 1952: Joe Louis surveys the title fight between “Sugar” Ray Robinson and Joey Maxim for the Pittsburgh Courier.

  June 22, 1933: Ralph Metcalfe and Jesse Owens set records at Chicago track meet, reported in Philadelphia Tribune.

  June 23, 1937: Joe Louis defeats James Braddock for heavyweight title, reported in Atlanta Daily World.

  June 24, 1967: “Facts About the Negro” by J.A. Rogers in Pittsburgh Courier.

  June 25, 1963: Philadelphia Tribune reports on protest march and voter registration drive in city to honor Medgar Evers.

  June 26, 1909: Mississippi Negro Business League, led by Charles Banks, holds annual meeting, reported in Baltimore Afro-American.

  June 27, 1963: Protestors stage sit-in against housing discrimination in Torrence, California, reported in Los Angeles Sentinel.

  June 28, 1956: Advertisement for Angelus Funeral Home in Los Angeles Sentinel.

  June 29, 1929: “Decatur Street Tutti” by Jabbo Smith and his Rhythm Aces, featured in Norfolk Journal and Guide.

  June 30, 1934: New York Amsterdam News congratulates black high school graduates in New York City.
• 1 2019-03-12T23:56:33+00:00 June 4, 1904 6 plain published 2019-10-01T21:13:50+00:00 Guest post by Lucy Caplan, PhD candidate in American Studies and African-American Studies at Yale University.
  
  In the June 4, 1904, issue of the Indianapolis Freeman, the musical and theatrical critic Sylvester Russell published a moving meditation on the life of a man he called “our greatest musical friend from far across the sea”: composer Antonin Dvorak. What had Dvorak done to merit this appellation? According to Russell, the Czech composer’s influence on African-American music had been profound. It affected musicians across a variety of genres, from operatic vocalists to Tin Pan Alley songwriters. In its assessment of Dvorak’s wide-ranging legacy, Russell’s article suggests that for many African-American musicians in the turn-of-the-century United States, everyday musical experience stretched across both lines of genre and lines of race. (Click to view PDF of article.)
  
  Russell’s article begins with a brief biography of Dvorak that emphasizes the composer’s ascent from “humble parentage” to a place of preeminence in the transatlantic world of classical music. In 1892, at the height of his success as a composer, Dvorak was recruited by philanthropist Jeannette Meyers Thurber to serve as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. It was while serving as the conservatory’s director that Dvorak made his now-famous pronouncement that black and Native American vernacular music, particularly the spirituals, could serve as the foundation of American music. “The new American school of music,” he told an interviewer, “must strike its roots deeply into its own soil…I am now satisfied that inspiration for truly national music might be derived from the Negro melodies or Indian chants.”¹⁰⁶ Dvorak’s prestige and foreign background, Russell argues, enabled him to make claims about the value of black music that white Americans would not otherwise accept. “He asserted that the music of the Negroes was America’s original music,” Russell surmises. “This fell upon the ears of the American white people like a heavy clap of thunder. It was truth by assertion. There are those in America who do not like to hear the truth about the original American music, and that is why the voice of a foreigner with superior musical knowledge resounded.”
  
  Dvorak put these ideas into practice in his own music. Listen here to the second movement of his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” which includes a melody so clearly inspired by the spirituals that many listeners assumed it was one. In fact, one of Dvorak’s African-American students, Harry T. Burleigh, later arranged Dvorak’s melody as the song “Goin’ Home”; listen here to Paul Robeson’s rendition of Burleigh’s song. Although musicologists have called into question the extent of Dvorak’s exposure to black and Native American musical traditions, revealing that his knowledge derived largely from white-authored, heavily mediated sources, Dvorak’s commitment was nonetheless remarkable, and his influence, as Russell demonstrates, profound.¹⁰⁷
  
  The second part of Russell’s article is especially interesting for the far-reaching legacy that it attributes to Dvorak. Noting the composer’s popularity among critics and audiences alike, Russell expresses confidence that “his death will be a living death.” He first describes the musical successes of Dvorak’s African-American students at the National Conservatory, who, in addition to Burleigh, included singers Theodore Drury, Desseria Plato, and Margaret Scott. More surprisingly, Russell goes on to note that Dvorak’s influence extends to those working in “a lower grade of Negro catchy music”: genres including vaudeville, musical theater, and popular song. In particular, he mentions the songwriters Rosamond Johnson, Sidney Perrin, and Shepard Edmonds.
  
  By emphasizing that Dvorak had as much of an effect on popular songwriters as he did on classically trained singers, Russell challenges conventional notions of classical music as distinctly separate from other musical forms, instead providing evidence of mutual influence across various genres. Much like Dvorak himself claimed space for the spirituals within the realm of classical music, Russell claims space for Dvorak’s musical ideas within the realm of black popular culture.
  
  The wide range of Russell’s musical references suggests that as a critic and listener, he experienced music in a way that was not limited by genre or by the racial background of its creators. In one sense, the breadth of his musical taste seems akin to that of today’s listeners: in our era of curated playlists, YouTube, and Spotify, we can move with ease across various genres and styles. Russell’s article suggests that, although their modes of access were of course quite different, turn-of-the-century African-American listeners experienced music in much the same way. Because much scholarship on American music tends to be organized along lines of race and genre, however, this aspect of how music functioned in everyday life has often been obscured. A closer look at the work of critics like Russell reveals a more nuanced sense of how African-American listeners experienced music in their everyday lives, and indicates that there is exciting scholarly work to be done in rethinking the categories typically used to study the American musical past.