{"id":62372,"date":"2021-11-26T01:28:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T01:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62372"},"modified":"2021-12-04T01:03:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T01:03:02","slug":"an-overdue-ovation-for-florence-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62372","title":{"rendered":"An Overdue Ovation for Florence Price"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Overdue Ovation for Florence Price<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Little Rock Soir\u00e9e<\/a>
\n2021-09-29<\/p>\n

Heather Honaker<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Photo of Florence Price<\/a> by G. Nelidoff, courtesy of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI am a woman, and I have some Negro blood in my veins \u2013 and you will understand some of the difficulties that confront one in such a position. Please judge my music on its own merit,\u201d wrote Florence Price<\/a> to Boston Symphony<\/a> conductor Serge Koussevitzky<\/a> in 1943.<\/p>\n

Price was born a Little Rock<\/a> native in 1887 into a mixed-race family at 2100 Broadway<\/a>. Her father was the only Black dentist in town, and her mother was a music teacher. She began playing the piano and composing music at 3 years old, and at 11, published her first work. She graduated valedictorian of Capitol Hill High School<\/a> at the age of 14 and went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music<\/a> in Boston<\/a> at 16.<\/p>\n

One of only three Black students at the conservatory, Price was counseled by her mother to list her hometown as Pueblo, Mexico<\/a>, to conceal her race<\/a>. She graduated with honors in three years with a double-major in organ performance and piano teaching.<\/p>\n

After school, she came home to teach at Cotton Plant Academy<\/a> and then Shorter College<\/a> before moving to Atlanta<\/a> to become head of the Clark College<\/a> Music Department. In 1912, she returned to Little Rock to marry attorney Thomas Price and raise a family.<\/p>\n

Racial tensions caused them to move to Chicago<\/a> in 1927, and it wasn\u2019t long before she and her husband divorced. There, she attended classes to perfect her craft, played the organ for silent film screenings and wrote songs for radio ads…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Overdue Ovation for Florence Price Little Rock Soir\u00e9e 2021-09-29 Heather Honaker Photo of Florence Price by G. Nelidoff, courtesy of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. \u201cI am a woman, and I have some Negro blood in my veins \u2013 and you will understand some of the difficulties that confront one in such a position. Please […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,8,20,25],"tags":[2418,32471,32540,32467,30896,32465,32469,32466,32464,32470,1392,32468],"class_list":["post-62372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-arkansas","tag-arkansas-symphony-orchestra","tag-florence-b-price-2","tag-florence-beatrice-price","tag-florence-price","tag-heather-honaker","tag-linda-holzer","tag-little-rock","tag-little-rock-soiree","tag-mike-mayton","tag-music","tag-thomas-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62372"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62500,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62372\/revisions\/62500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}