A. Kori Hill
Have you ever been excluded? Maybe a classmate didn’t invite you to a sleepover, or one of your parents went to your favorite restaurant (without you!).
Or maybe someone didn’t invite you to their sleepover because they think you’re “different.” Maybe they didn’t let you join their club because they don’t like the way you dress. Did you know that this happened not only to kids but to adults, too? This treatment was legal 70 years ago.
That’s what happened to a lot of Black classical musicians in the early twentieth century. Prior to 1954, lots of states, especially in the South, had laws that made it legal to discriminate against other people due to the color of their skin. You’ve probably heard these called Jim Crow laws, after the racist stock character from minstrel shows, Jim Crow.
While some states had laws, some folks practiced racial segregation even when there weren’t laws against it. This led some musicians to form their organizations where they wouldn’t be excluded because they were Black and could actively celebrate and support Black performers and composers, established and emerging. The National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) is one such example.
Founded in 1919, NANM had its start several years earlier, with violinist Clarence Cameron White and R. Nathaniel Dett writing to their colleagues about the need for a professional organization for Black classical musicians. Composer-pianist-journalist Nora Holt and teacher Henry L. Grant joined forces and established NANM. The group quickly grew to include folks in states across the nation, with two branches in Chicago, the organization’s home base.
In 1924, Florence Price petitioned NANM to establish a Little Rock branch; it’s unclear if that went through. But we know Price had been a NANM member since 1920; Price scholar Rae Linda Brown has noted that Price’s application to the Arkansas Music Teachers Association was rejected because they didn’t allow Black members; she was named a AMTA Foundation Fellow in 2018.
We don’t know the exact year her application was rejected, but it speaks to the importance of a group like NANM. After her move to Chicago in 1927, Price joined the R. Nathaniel Dett branch and the Chicago Music Association (CMA) branch (fun fact, CMA had been established before NANM was founded and became a branch after the fact). As a member, Price programmed recitals, gave lectures on what it was like to be a composer, and had many opportunities to hear her music performed by NANM members, sometimes even playing her works with them!
Another important intervention was in NANM’s scholarship competition. Organized by instrument (e.g. piano, voice, violin), music by Black composers featured prominently; if you were participating in the organ category, you’d likely prepare one of Price’s organ suites; if you’re a violinist, maybe Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s African Dances or William Grant Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano.
NANM is still active today, the oldest-operating Black music organization in the United States. You can also look at some of their papers at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College of Chicago. So many big names in classical music––Harry T. Burleigh, Marian Anderson, William Warfield––were either NANM members, participated as judges in NANM competitions, or in the case of Anderson, was the inaugural NANM scholarship recipient!
NANM was and remains an important organization in the history of American classical music. It is also one of many examples of how folks of color used self-determination to support themselves in an unjust world.
