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Black History

Florence Beatrice Price: A First in Classical Music

In 1903, Price attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Knowing that race was a barrier for entry, she presented herself as being of Mexican descent. In three years, she earned a soloist’s diploma in organ and a teacher’s diploma in piano.

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Florence Beatrice Price/ International Florence Price Festival

Eleven years into the Jim Crow laws, Florence B. Price (1888–1953) was born into a middle-class family in Little Rock, Ark. It was a time when anyone of African descent in North America, no matter their successes, was viewed as part of the under-class.
Price’s mother was a music teacher, owned and ran a restaurant, worked in real estate, and served as secretary of the International Loan and Trust Company. 

Her father was an artist, a notable dentist, and inventor of patented dental tools.
The family was considered among the ‘10 percenters,’ meaning people who benefited from a classical education and had the potential to lead American society.

They were known to host gatherings of the Black intelligentsia. Young Florence entertained those guests on the piano, a skill taught by her mother.
In 1903, Price attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Knowing that race was a barrier for entry, she presented herself as being of Mexican descent. In three years, she earned a soloist’s diploma in organ and a teacher’s diploma in piano.
Encouraged to compose, Florence studied composition and counterpoint. Her early works included pieces for piano and organ. She later returned to the South, teaching at the Arkadelphia Presbyterian Academy and later at Little Rock’s Shorter College. She became head of the music department at Clark University in Atlanta (1910–1912), and then returned to Little Rock.
Despite her qualifications, Price was denied membership to the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association. Refusing to give up, she established her own music studio and founded the Little Rock Club of Musicians. 

At that time, racial tension in Little Rock was escalating. The numbers of Black men being beaten and lynched were on the rise. Price and her husband fled to Chicago for their safety.
The Prices divorced in 1931, leaving Florence a single mother. She then played the organ for silent film screenings and wrote popular songs for WGN radio. She forged friendships with like-minded musicians and artists and continued her composition studies. Eventually, Price’s concert music came to the attention of one of her teachers, which led to her big break in 1932.
Price won several prizes at the Wanamaker Music Composition Contest. These successes attracted the attention of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director, who, soon after, conducted a performance of Price’s First Symphony (1933).

At that moment, she became established as a composer of note and the first Black woman in American history to have a symphonic work performed by a major American orchestra.
“It is a faultless work, a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion … worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertory,” the Chicago Daily News reported.
Despite her success, Price struggled, surviving mostly on the kindness of friends. She suffered from poor health and was often hospitalized. By 1953, her work was gaining a new momentum. While preparing for a promotion trip to Europe, she suffered a heart attack and died.

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Oakland Post: Week of March 22 – 28, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March March 22 – 38, 2023

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 22 - 38, 2023

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Black History

Westley (“Wess”) Watende Omari Moore: Maryland’s First

Wess Moore (born 1978) has taken his own place in the history of American politics. He is Maryland’s first Black governor in its 246-year history and the third Black person elected governor of a U.S. state since Reconstruction.

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Wes Moore Govenor
Wes Moore Govenor

Wess Moore (born 1978) has taken his own place in the history of American politics. He is Maryland’s first Black governor in its 246-year history and the third Black person elected governor of a U.S. state since Reconstruction.

“It’s humbling because this is the state of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall,” Moore, a Takoma Park, Maryland native, told USA Today. “It shows that progress requires work, but it is possible as long as we’re willing to grow together.”

Moore described Election night in 2022 as “a celebration,” although he was “soaking in the moment,” thinking of his maternal grandmother, Winell Thomas, who died five days before the election.

Thomas helped raise Moore after his father, a broadcast journalist bearing the same name, died. About his grandmother’s faith in his future, Moore said: “If you had asked her when I was young if there was a chance this could have happened, she would have said yes.”

But earlier on, Moore would have disagreed. After his father’s death, Moore’s family relocated to the Bronx to live with his grandparents. Life without his father was difficult; he felt as if he didn’t fit anywhere.

Thomas enrolled Moore in an elite prep school at age 6. But coming home to the Bronx after being with wealthy classmates made him feel out of place. He’d become angry. Later, about age 11, he became truant and was placed in a squad car and arrested for tagging walls with graffiti. Moore told the MinnPost that his mother, Joy Moore, then “begged her parents to take out a loan against their house so she could send [me] to a military boarding school.”

By age 13, Moore was enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy and College. The experience pushed him to put his life back on track. He worked as an intern for then-Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and later graduated from Johns Hopkins University. Moore earned a Rhodes Scholarship, which led him to earn his master’s in international relations from Wolfson College at Oxford.

In 2005, Moore deployed to Afghanistan as a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division, tasked to lead soldiers in combat. On returning, he served as a White House Fellow.

“My mother and grandmother believed in me and sacrificed for me,” Moore told USA Today about the encouragement he received from family. “That election moment was a testament to that sacrifice.”

There’s an imposter syndrome with children of color, Moore says, where “you’re waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, how’d you get in here?’”

Moore wants every child of color to know that “they are never in a room because of someone’s benevolence, kindness or social experiment. They’re in that room because they belong there.”

An intimate narrative about finding meaning in a volatile age, Wess Moore’s “The Work: Searching for a Life that Matters” will inspire readers to see how we can each find our own path to purpose and help create a better world.

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Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 - 21, 2023

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