Celebrating Martin Luther King Day: K of C, and African American Classical Musicians

I received an email today from the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of the Knights of Columbus with this press release about a rather unknown facet of their history.

SquareOne Publishers Re-Issues Knights of Columbus 1924 Black History Classic

Here's the Amazon link to the book, W.E.B. DuBois, The History of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America.  I think it is significant that the Knights of Columbus was at the forefront of promoting equality and racial harmony in the United States long before it was an open topic for discussion.  Perhaps it's because the KofC had its origins in an immigrant population that suffered significant and sometimes violent discrimination at that time: Irish Catholics, factory workers and coal miners.  (Remember he song, "Sixteen Tons," made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford?)

The Wikipedia article on the Knights of Columbus briefly tells Fr. McGiveney's motivations in founding it, 125 years ago:

The primary motivation for the Order was to be a mutual benefit society. As a parish priest in an immigrant community, McGivney saw what could happen to a family when the breadwinner died and wanted to provide insurance to care for the widows and orphans left behind. He himself had to temporarily leave his seminary studies to care for his family when his father died.  In the late 19th century, Catholics were regularly excluded from labor unions and other organizations that provided social services.  In addition, Catholics were either barred from many of the popular fraternal organizations, or, as in the case of Freemasonry, forbidden from joining by the Catholic Church itself. McGivney wished to provide them an alternative. He also believed that Catholicism and fraternalism were not incompatible and wished to found a society that would encourage men to be proud of their American-Catholic heritage.  It was also founded in order to show that American-Catholics were patriotic and loyal citizens of the United States.

I also did not know that Carl Anderson had been a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights before becoming Supreme Knight in 2000.

Not quite on this day, but on January 7, 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.  

The role that African Americans have played in classical music in the USA is unknown and underrated.   Perhaps the greatest was William Grant Still, who became the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in 1936.  He was active in the concert and motion picture scene in Los Angeles until his death in 1978.  His daughter, Judith Anne Still, maintains the William Grant Still Music website, with a lot of information, and also sells recordings and sheet music.

There's also a wonderful website on the African Heritage in Classical Music where one could immerse oneself profitably in a world that I daresay is new and unknown to most of us.  Let yourself spend some time there.  It could be one of those "aha!" experiences that are mind-broadening if not life-changing.