Chronology

Below is a brief, and still very incomplete, chronology of some significant events involving African American vocal soloists or performing groups, composers, and authors/publishers of books related to vocal music. Please email me if you wish to suggest other entries.

1791	Composer and vocalist Newton Gardner (1746-1826) opens one the first black-owned singing school in the United States.
1853	Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (ca. 1824-1876), known as the "Black Swan," makes her New York debut at the Metropolitan Hall. Because African Americans are denied admission to the concert, she gives an additional performance at the Broadway Tabernacle.
1854	Greenfield sings in a command performance before Queen Victoria of England.
1867	Slave Songs of the United States, a collection of plantation songs and spirituals compiled by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, is published.

1871	Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, begin their first tour.
1878	James M. Trotter (1842-1892) publishs Music and Some Highly Musical People, which represents the first overview of African American music: popular, folk, and concert.
1883	Marie Selika Williams (ca. 1849-1937) gives a command performance for Queen Victoria.

1886	Amelia Tilghman becomes the first African American publisher and editor of a music magazine, The Musical Messenger.
1892	The World's Fair Colored Opera Company, with featured singer, soprano Matilda Sissieretta Jones (1869-1933), becomes the first African American group to perform at New York City's Carnegie Hall. They appeared less than one year after the hall's opening. Sissieretta Jones, known as the "Black Patti," sings before Benjamin Harrison, president of the United States.
1900	Composer J. Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) and writer James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) pen the music and words of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

1914	The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) forms, with James Weldon Johnson and composer/baritone Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) as charter members.

1916	H. T. Burleigh publishes the first art song arrangements of spirituals, Jubilee Songs of the United States.
1919	The National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) holds its first convention in Chicago, Illinois.
1921	Tenor Roland Hayes (1887-1976(7)) gives a command performance before King George V of England
1925	Bass Paul Robeson (1898-1976), accompanied by pianist Lawrence Brown, gives the first recital of all Negro spirituals and worksongs at the Greenwich Village Theatre, New York, New York.

1927	Lillian Evanti (1890-1967) debuts in the title role of Delibes' opera, Lakmé, in Nice, France
1930	Caterina Jarboro (1903-1986) debuts in the title role in the Verdi opera, Aida, at the Puccini Theater, Milan, Italy.

1933	Hall Johnson (1888-1970) opera, Run Little Chillun, is the first Black folk opera produced on Broadway.
1934	Four Saints in Three Acts, music by Virgil Thomson and libretto by Gertrude Stein, is the first opera with an all-African American cast performed on Broadway.
1935	George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess opens on Broadway, with baritone Todd Duncan (1903-1998) as Porgy, soprano Anne Brown (b. 1915) as Bess, and Ruby Elzy (1908-1943) as Serena.

1936	Negro Musicians and Their Music, an historical account of African American musical performers and styles, makes publication shortly after the death of its author, Maud Cuney Hare (11874-1936).
1939	Contralto Marian Anderson (1897-1993) gives a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to allow her use of Constitution Hall. The program drew a crowd of 75,000 and millions of radio listeners.

1945	Duncan becomes the first African American to sing with a major American opera company, the New York City Opera, in the role of Tonio in Leoncavallo's I pagliacci
1946	Soprano Camilla Williams (b. 1922) signs a contract with the New York City Opera, the first African American to do so with a major American opera company. Her debut with the company was as the title role in Madama Butterfly.
1948	Hayes publishes a collection of folksongs entitled, My Songs: Afraamerican Religious Folk Songs.

1949	Troubled Island, an opera by William Grant Still (1895-1978), becomes the first opera composed by an African American to be performed by a major American opera company, the New York City Opera.

1951	Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera written specifically for presentation on television, was premiered by the NBC Television Opera Theatre, New York. The cast included bass-baritone Willis Patterson as King Balthazar.
1953	Soprano and educator Dorothy Maynor (1910-1996) performs the U.S. National Anthem at the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower. This is the first time an African American sings at an American inaugural.
	Soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs (b. 1925) becomes the first African American to sing at La Scala in the role of Elvira in Rossini's L'Italiana in Algieri. She is selected for the role at the request of conductor Herbert von Karajan.

1955	Anderson becomes the first African American to sing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, when she appears in the role of Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera, by Verdi.
	Robert McFerrin (b. 1921) makes his Met debut (the first African American male to do so) as Amonasro in Verdi's Aida.
	Leontyne Price (b. 1927) appears on NBC television in the title role of Puccini's Tosca, the first time an African American sings in an opera telecast

1961	Soprano/mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry (b. 1937) becomes the first African American to sing at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany when she sings the role of Venus in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser.

1963	Maynor opens the Harlem School of the Arts in community center of St. James Presbyterian Church, New York City, beginning with 20 students. By her retirement as its executive director in 1979, the school had grown to 40 instructors and over 1,000 students and had moved into a new, 37,000 square foot facility.	Price/Díaz
1966	Leontyne Price, along with Justino Díaz, create the title roles in Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra. The opera was commissioned especially for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera's new facilities at Lincoln Center.
1972	Treemonisha premiered 55 years after the death of the opera's composer, Scott Joplin (1868-1917), at the Atlanta (Georgia) Memorial Arts Center.

1975	Maynor becomes the first African American member of the Metropolitan Opera board.
1976	Joplin receives a special Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his contributions to American music.

1978	Simon Estes becomes the first male African-American to sing a major role on the stage at Bayreuth, performing the title role in Wagner's Der fliegende Hollander
1996	Composer George Walker (b. 1922) receives the Pulitzer Prize for Lilacs, a work for soprano and orchestra commissioned by the Boston Symphony as part of its tribute to tenor Roland Hayes. This marks the first time an African American has won the prize for music.
2001	Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves (b. 1964) is the featured singer at the National Prayer Service held at the Washington National Cathedral following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and the downing of United Airlines Flight 93 in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Updated May 6, 2008.

Please submit contributions, comments, or suggestions to Randye Jones.. Contents of Afrocentric Voices may be used for non-commercial purposes only if the source is acknowledged. All material remains the property of its creator. All commercial rights reserved.