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Subject: Eileen Southern, Chronicler of Black Music

Author: Dead at 82

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: October 19, 2002 4:26:16 EDT Eileen Jackson Southern, a scholar of Renaissance and African-American music and the first black woman to be appointed a tenured full professor at Harvard University, died on Sunday at her home in Port Charlotte, Fla. She was 82. As a researcher, author and teacher, Dr. Southern documented the history and scope of African-American contributions to American music. Much of her work remains in print. "The Music of Black Americans: A History" (1971) is in its third edition (Norton, 1997). She also compiled the "Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians" (Greenwood, 1982) and "The Music of Black Americans" (Norton, third edition, 1997). In 1973, with her husband, Prof. Joseph Southern, she founded Black Perspectives in Music, the first musicological journal on the study of black music. She edited the journal until it ceased publication in 1990. She received a National Humanities Medal in 2001 for having "helped transform the study and understanding of American music." She also received the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society of American Music. In a way, Eileen Southern's mission was prompted by a question she encountered while teaching at CUNY's York College in 1968. At issue was the inclusion of music in a black-studies curriculum. She recalled that a colleague asked, "Besides jazz, what is there?" Her life's work was meant to give an answer. She traced the evolution of black choruses from church singing groups, and a startling number of black orchestras like the Negro Philharmonic Society of New Orleans. In the early 1900's, black and white audiences flocked to Carnegie Hall to hear the Clef Club Symphony Orchestra under its conductor James Reese Europe play music by black composers like Harry T. Burleigh and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Eileen Jackson was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Chicago. Encouraged by her parents, whose home was a haven for black musicians, she studied piano and made her first concert appearance at age 7. She continued to give concerts on tour while pursuing her academic career and musicological studies until the mid-1950's. She graduated in 1940 from the University of Chicago, where she received a master's degree the next year. Her thesis was "The Use of Negro Folksong in Symphonic Form." Faced with racial discrimination, she started teaching at traditionally black colleges in Texas and Louisiana. Moving to New York in 1954, she taught public school before joining the CUNY faculty of Brooklyn College in 1960. She became a full professor in 1972 at York College, where she also served as chairwoman of the music department. In the 1950's she studied at New York University under the Renaissance music scholar Gustave Reese. She received her Ph.D. in 1961 with a dissertation about Renaissance music. It was published as "The Buxheim Organ Book" (Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1963). Dr. Southern went to Harvard as a lecturer in 1974 and received a dual appointment in Afro-American studies and music in 1976. She headed the department of Afro-American studies from 1975 to 1979 and retired in 1987 as a professor emeritus. She is survived by her husband of 60 years, Professor Southern; a daughter, April S. Reilly of Florence, Calif.; a son, Edward J., of Port Charlotte; a sister, Stella Hall of Chicago; and three grandchildren. She was the editor of "African American Theater: `Out of Bondage' (1876), and `Peculiar Sam: or The Underground Railroad' (1879)" (Garland, 1994). She also wrote, with Dr. Josephine Wright, "Images: Iconography of Music and Musicians in African-American Culture" (Garland, 1998). Both are in print. Dr. Southern remembered her reception at Harvard as far from cordial. In "A Pioneer," an essay she contributed to the 1993 anthology "Blacks at Harvard," she told of years of stress spent gaining respect for herself and the fledgling department she headed. But she invoked her role model, W. E. B. Du Bois. "Like him, I went to Harvard because it was a great opportunity for me as a black female scholar, and I accepted the reality of racial and sex discrimination," she wrote. "In its role as nurturer of scholars, Harvard never let me down!" [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]