Harriet Gibbs Marshall

Harriett Gibbs Marshall’s compassion motivated her to improve the world through music education. She established multiple schools, including a music conservatory at Eckstein-Norton University in Kentucky, Washington Conservatory of Music in Washington D.C., and the Jean Joseph Industrial School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her career also included serving as the supervisor for the music programs in the District of Columbia’s African-American Schools and expansion of the Negro Music Center in Washington D.C.

Harriet Gibbs Marshall had a dream. She wanted to open a music conservatory for African Americans that would not only inspire and train new black artists, but also uplift the community by preserving the rich African American musical heritage and by increasing the number of performances by professional musicians open to black audiences. Marshall's dream became a reality in 1890 when she founded a music conservatory at Eckstein-Norton University in Kentucky. She was also the founder of the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression in Washington, D.C., in 1903.

Harriet Aletha Gibbs Marshall was born on February 18, 1868, in Victoria, British Columbia, to Mifflin Wistar Gibbs and Maria Ann Alexander Gibbs of Kentucky. She had two siblings, Ida Gibbs and Horace E. Gibbs. Marshall's father was a high achiever. A successful businessman and lawyer, he was elected a municipal court judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1873. Besides the inspiration Marshall received from her father, she also received strong support from her husband, Napolean Bonaparte Marshall, an attorney and Harvard graduate who practiced law in Massachusetts and New York.

In 1889 Harriet became the first African-American woman to graduate from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance. She later continued her studies in Boston, Chicago, and then Paris. After touring the United States briefly as a concert pianist she acquired a teaching position at the Normal School in Huntsville, Alabama. Her next position was at Eckstein-Norton University, a small black industrial college in Cane Spring, Kentucky. Harriet established the music department during her ten year stay at the institution. She raised money for the construction of a music building by performing solo piano concerts that also included the Eckstein-Norton Choir, a group she organized and directed. In 1900, she left Cane Spring and moved to Washington, D.C. to become the Assistant Director of Music for African-American public schools. However, Harriet was frustrated in this position because of the lack of funding and insufficient facilities in the schools, which undermined her efforts to meet the needs of her black students.

Even though she was in charge of the black music department, most of the authority lied in the hands of her administrators. Harriet had intended to establish a music conservatory for black students for some time and being the Assistant Director of Music for African-American public schools made her realize even more how much an African-American conservatory was needed. She convened a group of music teachers who were well recognized for their contributions to music education in order to organize a board of directors for her proposed school. This group included two Washington city commissioners, the director of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and various other professional men and women of Washington, D.C.

The result of this group’s planning was the establishment of the Washington Conservatory of Music in 1903. The faculty included world-renowned African-American musicians such as Clarence Cameron White, violinist and composer; J. Hilary Taylor, pianist and founder of the Negro Music Journal; and Emma Azalia Smith Hackley, soprano and educator (discussed at length earlier in this thesis), along with Gabriele Lewis Pelham, Livonia Haywood Johnson, Jeanette Williamson, and Harriet herself. The Conservatory offered courses in applied instruction (piano, voice, organ, strings), string ensemble, music history and musical biography, harmony (including counterpoint), public school music, and class piano.

The opening of the conservatory was announced in the Negro Music Journal, which served as the official publication of the school. J. Hilary Taylor explained in it the positive impact that this school would have on the black community: “This movement should meet with the approval and support of all earnest music-lovers and educators and the public in general. If we desire racial progress, we must encourage all worthy movements that tend to uplift a community.”

Also featured in this article was a list of the board members, a faculty roster, and pictures of some of the faculty. The Washington Conservatory of Music was first housed in the True Reformers Hall. In 1904 Harriet’s father, Mifflin Gibbs, gave her a building at 902 Tea Street, N.W., which became the school’s permanent home. When the school moved from the True Reformers Hall, a new department, the School of Expression, which offered training in elocutionary and rhetorical skills, was added.

The conservatory struggled to remain open because of financial difficulties during its first several years. However, Harriet devised several ways to raise money to keep the school open. For example, she invited noted public figures to speak at student concerts, including Mary Church Terrell, an activist and teacher who started the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Fortunately, the conservatory also received financial contributions from philanthropist E. V. Macy and E. H. Dodge, along with Alain Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Samuel Coleridge Taylor, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Silver Burdett, a music textbook publishing company. These contributions were the result of Harriet’s many correspondences with state representatives, politicians, musicians, and any other potential
donors.

On June 3, 1906 Harriet married Napoleon Bonaparte Marshall who joined the faculty as a music history teacher and also took over many of the business arrangements.

By this time, the conservatory had nine faculty members and 160 students. It was becoming widely known and attracted students from the North, South, and Midwest.

Harriet began a new project in 1920. She wanted to build a center that would be devoted to the preservation of black music and set a goal to raise $100,000 (approximately $1.2 million today) to go toward what would be called the National Negro Music Center. The primary fundraiser for this project was a program called “Three Periods of Negro Music and Drama,” a large scale event that included music oratory, pageantry, and dance. The program was divided into three sections: African, Antebellum in America, and Modern.

In 1923 Harriet left the conservatory temporarily to move to Haiti where her husband had been appointed cultural attaché. While there she co-founded an industrial school for girls and her experiences led to the publication of her book The Story of Haiti (1930). This 177 page book, retrieved from the Bowling Green State University Library, was a detailed history of Haiti from 1485 to 1929. Harriet received excellent reviews for her thorough research of Haitian history.

In 1933, after her husband’s death, Harriet devoted all her time to the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression and to raising money for the National Negro Music Center. By this time, she had changed the name of the fund to the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Memorial Fund. Coleridge-Taylor was an African-English composer who had been a huge influence on the African-American musicians at that time, including Harriet herself. Her new goal was to raise $5,000 (approximately $72,000 today) to go toward the Center. In order to achieve this goal she wrote The Last Concerto (1936), which was a drama based on the life and works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The specific amount raised from this event is unknown, but the National Negro Music Center opened sometime after 1937.

However, the end product was different from her original vision. Instead of being a research facility, it became a library that featured the publications of black composers that were donated by several major publishing companies. The last production was the “Masque Musical” (1937). This program was more multicultural than the previous programs, featuring music from various countries such as Asia, South America, and Europe. It was performed once in 1937 and again in November of 1940.

Harriet continued to direct the Conservatory and National Negro Music Center during her final years even though she was confined to a wheelchair because of rheumatoid arthritis. She died on February 25, 1941 at the age of 72. After Harriet’s death, her cousin Josephine Muse became director of the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression. The Conservatory closed when Muse died in 1960. Today, most of the materials of the Conservatory are housed in Howard University’s Moorland-Springarn Research Center, which is the world’s largest repository devoted to the preservation of the African-American heritage the building where the Conservatory was housed was still standing, but in disrepair. Efforts to determine if the Washington Conservatory of Music was still standing were unsuccessful.

Sources: Thesis Paper Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music (August 2007), "A History of Three African American Women Who Made Important Contributions to Music Education Between 1903 and 1960," by DeAnna Rose Patterson; C.M. Bell Studio Collection (Library of Congress); OberlinMakesADifference.Com (Class of 1889; Notable Black American Women, Book 2 edited by Jessie Carney Smith