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ADAMS, ELIZABETH LAURA

(February 9, 1909–September 9, 1982) Writer

Elizabeth Laura Adams was among the first African American women whose writing has become a key part of Catholic literary works. As writers of the Harlem Renaissance era found ways to express themselves and define and discover their place, Adams chose to explore her spiritual life as a “young colored woman” who saw Catholicism as her spiritual goal. Her audience, although primarily white, saw a different perspective through her religious musings. Her autobiography of her spiritual awakening offers a journey toward peace and spirituality that culminates in her conversion to Catholicism. Her experiences as an African American who found a religious home in the Catholic church remains one of the key recommended readings for this faith. Adams’s writing, which began in the late 1920s and 1930s after her father’s death, focuses on her religious musing, for example, the work “The Finding of a Soul,” published in 1930, and other earlier poems and writings.

Born February 9, 1909, in Santa Barbara, California, Adams became an only child with the death of her infant brother. Her family, which was Methodist, strongly encouraged Adams’s commitment to her faith, but she feared the conversion, which, for church members, consisted of shouts and screams of frenzied emotions. Forbidden to pursue Catholicism primarily by her father, it was after his death in 1924 that Adams sought out the Catholic experience. When she graduated from high school, her mother gave her permission to convert.

Adams had always had an interest in art, music, and literature, thanks to her mother’s influence, and she submitted poems and essays to both literary and religious publications. She published “The Finding of a Soul” in 1930, and received a moderate degree of popularity for her work inclusive of the award she received from the Morning Star and the favorable review for her poem “Consecration.” Unfortunately, the literary club that favored her poem refused to publish it when they discovered she was a black woman. Racism was continually part of Adams’s life, from being denied communion to not being allowed to attend a Catholic school. Her mother, who operated from accommodating views, as espoused by Booker T. Washington, taught Adams to dismiss the anger of racism and pray for the offender.

In her journey for peace regarding racism and spiritual fulfillment, Adams decided to write about her personal journey in an essay series entitled “There Must Be a God . . . Somewhere: A True Story of a Convert’s Search for God,” printed in 1941, in Torch, a national Catholic magazine. As a result of its success, she published the compiled work as Dark Symphony in 1942, which serves as her most important work. This autobiography not only details the importance of poetry and music in her life, but it is structured thematically to address many topics. Even though Adams acknowledges that dismissing racism, as she was taught, may not have been the best solution and that faith does not eradicate evil, she still concludes her journey with the sense that through faith comes peace and salvation.

Dark Symphony, Adams’s most important work, reached a broad audience. The Catholic church embraced her autobiography, while many blacks saw her passive and patient response to racism as submissive and accommodating. Supported by the Catholic church, the book was reprinted for readers in Great Britain and Italy and printed in Dutch. As a seminal text in the Catholic religious tradition and an importation inclusion to conversion narratives found in American and African American traditions, her book continued to be recommended well into 1959 in the National Catholic Almanac. Although the success of the book sustained Adams and allowed her to care for herself and mother for more than ten years, Adams had to take on other jobs as a result of poor health for them both. She took positions as a secretary, domestic worker, and maid to sustain her family. Adams continued to live in Santa Barbara for the remainder of her life.—Lean’tin L. Bracks

ALIX, MAE [MAY OR LIZA]

(August 31, 1902–?) Blues, cabaret, and jazz vocalist

During the 1920s and 1930s, Mae Alix was known as the “Queen of the Nightclubs.” Because of her popularity, several entertainers, including famed jazz and blues singer, Alberta Hunter, used the pseudonym May Alix or Mae Alix on recordings.

The real Mae Alix was born in Chicago. She began performing as a teenager in local cabarets and night spots after winning a talent contest. Her voice and stage charisma were recognized by bandleader Jimmie Noone, who was headlining at Chicago’s Apex Club. With Noone, she performed and recorded several songs, including “Ain’t Misbehavin.” She was also billed as the “Queen of the Splits” because of the inclusion of running splits in her act.

Alix’s Chicago venues included the DeLuxe 400 Lounge, Club DeLisa, and the Sunset Club. Her fame spread to Harlem, Los Angeles, and Parisian night spots. She is remembered for catching the attention of the greatest jazz musician of any era—Louis Armstrong. With his Hot Five band, they recorded “Big Butter and Egg Man” on November 16, 1926, which became Armstrong’s first chart hit. Alix also worked with bandleaders Luis Russell, Carroll Dickerson, Ollie Powers, and Duke Ellington. Her marriage to pianist and songwriter Warley Asher ended in divorce. She retired from the business in 1941.—Gloria Hamilton

ANDERSON, HALLIE

(January 5, 1885–November 9, 1927) Dance orchestra conductor

Dance orchestra conductor Hallie Anderson turned her talents to directing theater bands during the Harlem Renaissance era. She was one of the young black women who were musical pacesetters for all-male, all-female, and mixed-gender groups. When she was with an orchestra, however, Anderson was always wielding the baton.

Anderson was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, and, while still a child, she and her family moved to New York City. There she studied music in three settings, with a private teacher, in the public schools, and at New York German Conservatory of Music. Early in the twentieth century, Anderson formed and led dance orchestras. She also gave concerts with the New Amsterdam Musical Association Band. Her 100-piece orchestra was different for that period, for it was integrated by gender and race. She handled her own business matters for her orchestras and advertised her work in the New York Age, offering an “orchestra for any occasion.” Beginning in 1905, and extending for many years, Anderson promoted an Annual Reception and Ball. She directed a five-piece male orchestra at the Lafayette Theater in 1914, and, in the late 1910s and early 1920s, she was organist at Harlem’s Douglas Theatre. She was again seen playing at the Lafayette in 1919, when she led a “lady band.” Large dance orchestras fell out of vogue, prompting her to take her talents elsewhere. She then directed theater bands. During the 1920s, Anderson directed theater orchestras in Philadelphia. She died in New York City.—Jessie Carney Smith

ANDERSON, MARIAN

(February 27, 1897–April 8, 1993) Contralto, concert singer, opera singer

Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson was born in 1897, to John Anderson, an employee at the Reading Terminal Market, and Anna, a former teacher, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the oldest of three daughters: Marian (1897), Alyse [Alice] (1900), and Ethel (1902); they were all musically talented. It was Marian for whom music was a passion. Throughout her life, she devoted her time and energy to honing her craft in spite of the limitations of race and poverty, which were rife in her career.

Anderson’s career began when she was six years old, and she became a member of the junior choir at Union Baptist Church. Her musical career reflects the individualism and struggles against racism of the Harlem Renaissance. Her repertoire emphasizes the awareness of and need to keep alive the history of her people. She is recognized as the first black American opera singer, the foremother of later black opera performers, singing for the inauguration of presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower (1957) and John F. Kennedy (1961), and for the miles covered and number of performances during her transcontinental tours.

Like many musicians, Anderson’s talents blossomed in the church; she was a natural contralto, sang soprano, and was capable of singing other parts in the choir. In the church she performed duets and solos. She was supported by both the church and her family. Her father purchased a piano for her when she was six but was unable to pay for lessons. The girls taught themselves to play, and later Marian also taught herself to play the violin. At the age of thirteen, she joined the senior choir and began visiting and performing at other churches and gained increasing recognition. Anderson was encouraged to enroll in a music school in Philadelphia, but she was denied admission because of her race. During her senior year in high school, she was heard by Giuseppe Boghetti and offered lessons, but she initially could not afford the cost of instruction. Due to her financial constraints and performing successes, her study was financed by a variety of financial endeavors. Among these were performing at social gatherings, a special collection at Union Baptist, and benefits. The Philadelphia Choral Society’s benefit concert garnered $500. Consequently, Anderson was able to study for varying periods of time under Emma Azalia Hackley, Mary Saunders Patterson, Giuseppe Boghetti, and Agnes Relfsnyder and expand her repertoire. In 1919, she sang to a crowd of thousands at the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. Inc., in Atlantic City. William “Billy” King, her accompanist, became her manager and booked a concert for her on April 23, 1924, at New York City’s Town Hall, which proved unsuccessful.

In spite of the Town Hall performance, Anderson’s exposure, achievements, and earning power increased. She entered a contest sponsored by Philadelphia’s Philharmonic Society and won, the first time a black person had done so. In 1925, she won a competition sponsored by Lewisohn Stadium in which there were 300 entries. Her prize was an appearance with the New York Philharmonics at Lewisohn Stadium. As a result, Anderson got a new manager, Arthur Johnson, a top concert manager, who put her under contract in 1926. She toured the eastern and southern United States. On December 30, 1926, Anderson performed a solo recital at Carnegie Hall that was a success; however, most of her performances were limited to black audiences. Like so many other black artists, she found Europe to be more receptive of her talents. She gained a scholarship thorough the National Association of Negro Musicians to study in Europe.

Anderson’s European studies allowed her a brief stay in England and thus began her numerous trips across the Atlantic to study and perform. On September 16, 1930, she made her European debut at London’s Wigmore Hall and later appeared at a Promenade Concert. She worked for a brief time and studied with Amanda Aldridge, renowned musician and daughter of the great African American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. Following a lackluster period in Europe, Anderson returned to the United States, but, after a 1931 concert, she returned to Europe on a Julius Rosenwald scholarship to study in Germany. Her debut concert in Berlin attracted the attention of Rule Rasmussen and Helmer Enwall, managers who arranged a Scandinavian Tour; Enwall later became her manager for additional tours throughout Europe. Anderson returned to the United States and then to Europe in 1933, again through the Rosenwald Fund. During this time she sang before King Gustav in Stockholm; King Christian in Copenhagen; and John Sibelius, a Finnish composer who dedicated his song “Solitude” to her. She traveled throughout Europe, performing more than 100 concerts. In 1935, Anderson performed in Paris, Brussels, Geneva, and Vienna, ending her trip in Salzburg, at an international festival called the Mozarteum. It was following this performance that Sol Hurok, a manager, made a contract with her for U.S. concerts. She returned to the United States and performed on December 2, 1935, for the second time at New York City’s Town Hall, and was a great success; she gave two concerts at Carnegie Hall and then toured the United States from coast to coast. She toured Europe again and Latin America through 1938, giving approximately 70 concerts per year.

By this time, Anderson was internationally known and received; however, the racial barriers that had confronted her during her career still permeated American society. In 1939, Hurok attempted to rent Constitutional Hall in Washington, D.C., for a concert, but the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), owners of the venue, denied her access because of her race. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt immediately resigned her membership in the DAR; Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People encouraged Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior, to arrange a free concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9. Anderson sang before 75,000 people, and millions listened on the radio; several weeks later, she gave a private concert at the White House, where Franklin D. Roosevelt was entertaining George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England. She appeared at Constitution Hall in several charity concerts during World War II.

In 1943, Anderson married Orpheus H. Fisher, a Delaware architect, and they lived on Maruianna Farm in Connecticut. In 1952, she made her television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. In January 1955, Anderson performed as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera at the Metropolitan Opera House and was the first black American singer at the Met. In 1957, she traveled as a goodwill ambassador sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the American National Theater and Academy, performing twenty-four concerts in twelve weeks; this led to the filming of The Lady from Philadelphia for the CBS Television Network. In 1956, Anderson wrote My Lord, What a Morning, her autobiography. Her farewell performance took place on April 19, 1965, at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

During her career and posthumously, Anderson received numerous awards and recognitions. Among them were the Spingarn Medal (1939); the Bok Award for an outstanding Philadelphia citizen (1941); the American Medal of Freedom, presented by President Lyndon Johnson (1963); and the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Ronald Reagan (1986). The U.S. Treasury also coined a half-ounce gold commemorative medal with her likeness (1980). In July 1992, Anderson moved to Portland, Oregon, to live with her nephew, conductor James DePriest. She died of heart failure.—Helen R. Houston

ANDREWS, REGINA M. ANDERSON [URSALA OR URSULA TRELLING, HENRY SIMONS]

(May 21, 1901–February 5, 1993) Librarian, civic leader, playwright, arts patron, community activist

During the most productive years of the Harlem Renaissance, Regina M. Anderson Andrews became a highly visible figure by providing an intellectual center for the active young artists of that period at the library where she worked, as a participant in the cultural movement, and by making her apartment a social haven for artists.

Andrews, who had a multicultural background, was born in Chicago, on May 21, 1901, to William Grant Anderson, a New York attorney, and Margaret Simons Andrews. She was educated at Wilberforce University in Ohio, the University of Chicago, and City College of New York, and she received her degree in library science from Columbia University Library School. In 1926, she married lawyer and New York assemblyman William T. Andrews and had one daughter.

Before her marriage, Andrews, Ethel Ray Nance, and Louella Tucker shared an apartment on Sugar Hill, one of Harlem’s most upscale residential areas. Their 580 Nicholas Avenue address became a place to meet the new cultural figures who came on the scene. It functioned as a literary salon and an intelligence outpost to identify new artists. Andrews and Nance then alerted the National Urban League’s executive director of research, Charles S. Johnson, who was often called the “godfather of the Harlem Renaissance,” of the new talent. Andrews also persuaded her supervisor, Ernestine Rose, of the 125th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (later renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture), to set up a place in the basement to give the emerging artists a forum for presenting their talents. Andrews and Nance also helped instigate the formation of the Civic Club, which became a launching pad for the young and unknown artists, including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Jean Toomer, and a chance for them to meet W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Doren, and others who were in a position to help their careers.

As library assistant at the 135th Street Branch, Anderson was associated with Du Bois’s Krigwa Players and advocated serious black drama. After the group disbanded in February 1929, Andrews, Dorothy Petersen, and several community leaders, including Jessie Redmon Fauset, Harold Jackman, and Ira De A. Reid, established the Negro Experimental Theater. The group relocated and also produced a number of plays, including several by Andrews and one of her first and later highly successful, Jacob’s Ladder, performed in 1931. It also attracted Broadway star Rose McClendon, who gave expert direction. Andrews’s other plays, written under the pseudonym Ursala or Ursula Trelling, included The Man Who Passed, Matilda, and Underground. She also used the pen name Henry Simons.

Andrews became the second vice president of the National Council of Women and National Urban League representative to the U.S. Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. She also worked with the State Commission for Human Rights. The Musical Arts Group Award and Community Heroine Award were given to her in recognition of her work. Before her retirement from the 135th Street Branch library, she became the first African American supervising librarian in the New York Public Library system and later moved to the Washington Heights Branch of the system. Andrews died in the New York City suburb Ossining.—Jessie Carney Smith

ARMSTRONG, LILLIAN “LIL” HARDING

(February 3, 1898–August 27, 1971) Musician, composer

One of America’s great early jazz pianists, Lillian “Lil” Harding Armstrong spent fifty years in a successful musical career centered in Chicago and New York, and became the first woman to enter the jazz field. Beginning in the 1920s, she played with some of the great jazz musicians of that period, as well as such accomplished singers as the blues great Alberta Hunter. For many years, Armstrong organized and led her own band.

The Memphis-born Armstrong was the daughter of Dempsey Harding; nothing is said of her father. She took piano and organ lessons while still a child and was also pianist and organist at a church and school. She began her higher education at Fisk University in Nashville, and later studied at the Chicago College of Music and New York College of Music. After leaving Fisk in 1917, she joined her family in Chicago and started her professional career at Jones’s Music Store, where she plugged songs and established contacts with important musicians. This led to her first major band experience, in 1918, with the Original New Orleans Creole Jazz Band, which played in swinging New Orleans style at the De Luxe Café. Armstrong joined a King Oliver-led band and, for six months in 1921, traveled to San Francisco with Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. By the summer of 1922, she had returned to her position in Chicago, with Oliver’s original band. Then she met Louis Armstrong, who joined the band that year; their courtship led to marriage in 1924.

Lil, who recognized Louis Armstrong’s talent and ability, had a marked influence on his life. She encouraged him to leave Oliver and join Fletcher Henderson and his band at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. She helped him become a better music reader and receive featured billing. She then organized her own band, the Dreamland Syncopators, performed at the Dreamland, and promoted Louis Armstrong as the “World’s Greatest Trumpet Player.” Between 1925 and 1929, Lil appeared on many of Louis’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, led some Hot Five dates as Lil’s Hot Shots, and joined recordings with the group Butterbeans and Susie, Alberta Hunter, and the Red Onion Jazz Babies. She became productive as a composer of jazz songs and wrote many of them without her husband’s assistance.

The Armstrongs returned to Chicago, and, in 1926, Lil’s job at the Dreamland ended. She led all-female and all-male bands in the Midwest during the mid-1930s, at times appearing as Mrs. Louis Armstrong and Her Orchestra. Back in New York from 1936 to 1940, she had regular radio broadcasts and was soloist in the revue Shuffle Along (1933). She recorded on the Decca label under the name Lil Harding. Her compositions included “My Hi-De-Ho Man,” “Born to Swing,” and “Let’s Get Happy Together.” The Armstrongs divorced in 1938, and Lil continued with diverse and successful experiences.

In the 1940s, Lil returned to Chicago and held long engagements at local clubs, made several tours, became a soloist in Paris, lived in London for a while, and returned to Chicago in the late 1950s. Her recordings continued, and she participated in the telecast Chicago and All That Jazz and NBC’s DuPont Show of the Week. She suffered a fatal heart attack on August 27, 1971, while performing at a memorial concert for Louis Armstrong held in Chicago.—Jessie Carney Smith

AUSTIN, LOVIE [CORA CALHOUN]

(September 19, 1887–July 10, 1972) Pianist, jazz singer, composer

Lovie Austin helped to enrich the lives of black female musicians of the Harlem Renaissance era with her own performances and compositions, as well as by working with such legendary figures as Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Alberta Hunter, and Bessie Smith. In 1923, her combo, the Blue Serenaders, accompanied blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey in her first recordings. Austin wrote “Graveyard Blues” for Bessie Smith and helped Alberta Hunter, who began to transcribe and copyright her early blues compositions.

Austin was born Cora Calhoun in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1887, and she died in Chicago in 1972. Her parents are unknown, and she may have been raised by her grandmother. Austin studied music theory and piano at Roger Williams University in Nashville, and later attended Knoxville College, both black institutions. She was married briefly to a movie house operator in Detroit, and later married a vaudeville performer named Austin, of the team Austin and Delaney. Some sources say that her second husband was Tommy Ladnier of the vaudeville circuit. Austin worked the vaudeville circuit and began to tour with the circuit in 1912. She later traveled with Irving Miller’s Blue Babies revue. She managed, composed, arranged, and directed her own musical shows, including Sunflower Girls and The Lovie Austin Revue, a popular attraction at Club Alabam in New York City.

Austin was one of the first female pianists to accompany early blues singers, including Ida Cox, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, and Ethel Waters, and she made her first recording in 1923, with Cox. Her collaborating instrumentalists included Louis Armstrong and Edward “Kid” Ory. Austin composed and arranged music for race records of the mid- and late 1920s. For twenty years, she arranged vaudeville-improvised music for Chicago’s Old Monogram Theater, where many leading black performers appeared. When her playing style fell out of vogue, Austin became a security inspector at a naval defense plant during World War II. She later worked at a dance school in Chicago and recorded for Capitol Records in 1946 and Riverside Records in 1961. She retired in 1962, and died ten years later. A revived interest in women in jazz came in the 1970s and spurred renewed fascination with Austin’s musical contributions.—Jessie Carney Smith

AYER, GERTRUDE ELISE JOHNSON MCDOUGALD

(October 11, 1884 or 1885–June 10, 1971) Educator, essayist, writer, activist

A multitalented contributor to the educational community during the Harlem Renaissance, Gertrude Elise Johnson McDougald Ayer took a stand that some women only dared to consider: racial and gender inequality. Her various writings, published in Crisis and Opportunity magazines, enabled her to make her views widely known. Despite her work, she was never considered part of the mainstream of the Harlem Renaissance.

Born on October 11, 1884, (or 1885), in New York City, Ayer was the daughter of Peter Augustus Johnson, who, among a variety of achievements, was a founder of the National Urban League. He also founded McDonough Memorial Hospital and was the third black American to practice medicine in New York City. Ayer’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Whittle Johnson, was English and an expert in fine needle work. Ayer studied at Hunter College, City College of New York, New York University, and Columbia University, but she never obtained a college degree. She became a teacher at Public School 11 in Manhattan in 1905, and remained there until 1911, when she resigned and married Cornelius W. McDougald. They had two children. McDougald Sr. was the initial counsel for Marcus Garvey, a journalist, activist, and organizational founder who was tried for mail fraud in 1923. In 1928, she remarried, this time to A. V. Ayer, a medical doctor and district health officer in Harlem; he died in 1976.

Ayer remained active in areas of her professional interests and spent some time working with the New York Urban League. Beginning 1915, she was assistant industrial secretary and attracted the interest of the Women’s Trade Union. The YMCA gave her financial support to conduct a survey entitled “New Day for the Colored Woman Worker,” which examined the work of black women in New York. Ayer later headed the Woman’s Department of the U.S. Labor Department Employment Bureau and became a counselor at Henry Street Settlement. In 1918, following the request of the Board of Education for New York Public Schools, Ayer initiated the counseling program for the local schools. She was a school administrator from 1924 to 1927, when she served as assistant principal of Public School 89 in Manhattan. She continued to speak and write about black women and employment, and she examined the stratification of these women in the job market and the discrimination that they encountered. Her article “The Task of Negro Womanhood,” published in Alain Locke’s The New Negro (1925), is an account of groups of women in the leisure class, business and the professions, and trades and industry.

In 1936, Ayer became the first African American woman to have a full-time principalship in New York City’s public schools. She became principal of Public School 119 in 1945, and remained there until 1954, when she retired. Expressing her teaching philosophy, she said that education should combine academic and practical learning. While lacking a college degree, she believed that those with degrees may know their subject matter but do not necessarily know how to teach.

Ayer was active in numerous organizations, including the New York chapter of the Workers’ Defense League, National Council of Women in Administration, Advisory Committee of the Hope Day Nursery and Neighborhood Children’s Center, and Ladies Auxiliary of Lincoln University. She was also a honorary member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

During the Harlem Renaissance era, she published numerous pieces in Opportunity, Crisis, and Alain Locke’s The New Negro (including the aforementioned article). Her articles also include “Social Progress” and “The Schools and the Vocational Life of Negroes.” Ayer’s works, as well as her beauty, were enduring. German American artist Winold Reiss captured her in a pastel reproduced in the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic entitled “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro.”—Jessie Carney Smith