The Dawson after winning the Pittsburgh Sun Telegram award for best choir in its annual jubilee, 1936. Up Front HHC Detre L&A, Mary Cardwell Dawson Papers, MSP 440, B1. F1.

African American collection

By Samuel W. Black, Director of African American Programs

The Black Legacy of Classical Music: Mary Cardwell Dawson and the National Negro Company

European classical music in its many forms work of Mary Cardwell Dawson, is an art that is not lost on Americans of founder of the National Negro Opera African descent. Synched with traditional Company. Dawson, an accomplished African rhythms and Christian hymns, work soloist with musical training from the songs and are reflected in the New England Conservatory of Music cultural expressions of Africans, enslaved in Boston, was called “Pittsburgh’s and free. In fact, as early as June 1868 the Opera Impresario” by historian Eric opera Ernani, a Verdi composition, was Ledell Smith.2 Born in Madison, North performed by the “pupils of the colored Carolina, in 1894, Dawson migrated public school of Allegheny City” on the to Pittsburgh around 1900 with her occasion of the Emancipation Tableau Vivant,” family. Dawson’s musical talent was a commemoration of the emancipation honed at Park Place African Methodist of slavery.1 This may very well have been Episcopal Church in Homestead, Pa. Mary Cardwell Dawson: music teacher, the first African American performance of After she went on to the New England opera singer, and director, 1920s. classical music in greater Pittsburgh. However, Conservatory, Dawson attended the Chicago HHC Detre L&A, Mary Cardwell Dawson Papers, MSS 0440. we do know that African Americans such Musical College before finally studying at the as Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield of the Fisk Company. By the late Ahmad Jamal. Jubilee Singers and soprano Sissieretta Jones 1920s, she had become an accomplished solo The Cardwell Dawson School of Music performed worldwide as classical vocalists artist and choir director. Her ambition was to also trained classical musicians in the black during the 19th century. Not as popular as direct a major company and she paved the way community. Ahmad Jamal may have gone other forms of African American musical with the Dawson Choir. In 1927 she married on to be a great jazz pianist, known for expression, European classical music such as Walter Dawson, a skilled electrician who calling jazz, “America’s Classical Music,” but opera, symphonic, virtuosi, and other forms helped her open the Cardwell Dawson School other students also went on to be classical have been performed by African Americans for of Music in the late 1920s in Homewood. Her performers and opera singers. In 1931 Dawson quite some time. school attracted many young people from the became the first president of the Pittsburgh Of special note in Pittsburgh is the neighborhood, including future jazz pianist Chapter of the National Association of Negro

16 Musicians (NANM). By the end of that the premier performance of the NNOC at Giuseppe Verdi, Felice, and others. Ouanga decade, she would be elected president of Syria Mosque in Oakland in 1941. was is the work of composer Clarence Cameron the national body. She began tinkering with the kick-off national presentation. From 1941 White; Nathaniel Dett composed The Ordering the idea of starting an opera company in the to 1962 the NNOC was the leading black of Moses; while Aida, the NNOC’s signature late 1930s and held fundraising performances opera company in America. It was known for production, was composed by Verdi but with around the city leading up to her formal its great performances but also as a proving an African theme. Dawson was not merely founding of the National Negro Opera ground for singers such as Robert McFerrin, doing black versions of white but was Company (NNOC) in 1941. The Company’s La Julia Rhea, Napoleon Reed, Lillian Evanti, exposing talented black performers, composers, debut performance was held at the national and Muriel Rahn among others. and directors to a local and national audience. convention of the NANM to coincide with Dawson had a vision for the NNOC. It Her reason was that opera was not a new art was not to simply perform form for African Americans, but an art form European classical operas, that African Americans had contributed to or but to perform operas inspired for over a century. She also wanted that reflected the African to prove that in a segregated society much Diaspora. The NNOC could be lost by marginalizing talented people specialized in African- of color. She was most proud when NNOC centered productions alum Robert McFerrin, the father of Grammy of noted operas with Award-winning pop and jazz artist Bobby African diasporic themes McFerrin, became the first African American or composed by people of male lead at the Metropolitan Opera in 1956. color. La Traviata, is derived Mary Cardwell Dawson later moved the from Afro-Frenchman NNOC to Washington, D.C., in 1951 and Alexander Dumas the Company disbanded after her death in and adapted by 1962. A house located at 7101 Apple Street in Homewood was the local office of the NNOC and is now a Pittsburgh City Historic Landmark. In 2004, Mary Cardwell Dawson’s niece, Barbara Edwards Lee, donated a collection of papers and photographs to the History Center.3 In 2016, costumes worn in numerous operatic productions of the NNOC were transferred to the History Center from the Library of Congress. The costumes are from 1940s-’50s productions of Aida, Ouanga, La Traviata, and The Ordering of Moses. Dawson left an inspiring legacy in Pittsburgh that has now been reborn with the transfer of these materials to the History Center. Flyer for National Negro Opera Company productions. Logo: Spirit Form Freedom Corner Monument, HHC Detre L&A, Mary Cardwell Dawson Papers, MSS 0440. Pittsburgh, Pa., © artist Carlos F. Peterson.

1 Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, June 4, 1868, p. 8. 2 Smith, Eric Ledell. “Pittsburgh’s Opera Impressario: Mary Cardwell Dawson” in Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine, Winter 1995. p. 4-11. Costume dress worn in the Opera 3 The Mary Cardwell Dawson Papers, 1916-2001, La Traviata, 1940s-1950s. are housed in the Thomas and Katherine Detre HHC Collections, 2016.75.17. Photo by Nicole Lauletta. Library & Archives at the Heinz History Center.

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