FREEDMEN UNIVERSITY

Lineage  Heritage  Delineation

Power is The Ability to Define Phenomena and Make it Act in a Desired Manner. - Huey P. Newton

W. A .W.G

Jessye Mae Norman 

was a Foundational Black American Opera Singer and Recitalist. 

She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. 

A commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages, Norman was associated with roles including Beethoven's Leonore, Wagner's Sieglinde and Kundry, Berlioz's Cassandre and Didon, and Bartók's Judith. 

The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound" that "has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. 

It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls.

Shirley Verrett

was an Foundational Black American Operatic Mezzo-Soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles making her a Soprano sfogato. 

Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s; she was particularly known for performing works by Giuseppe Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti. 

Verrett attended Oakwood University, a private historically black Seventh-Day Adventist university in Huntsville, Alabama, for a semester in 1949, but then returned to southern California and completed an associate degree in real estate at Ventura College. 

Though successful as a real estate agent, Verrett reconsidered her career choice and started serious voice study. 

In 1955, she won two California state competitions sponsored by the Young Musicians Foundation, and later that year she appeared on Talent Scouts, a national television show hosted by Arthur Godfrey. 

Her appearance on that program led to a scholarship at the Juilliard School New York. Verrett went on to study with Anna Fitziu and with Marion Szekely Freschl at Juilliard. In 1961, she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

Grace Bumbry

was a Foundational Black American Opera Singer, considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, who also ventured to soprano roles. 

A pioneer among African-American classical singers, she gained international acclaim as Venus in Tannhäuser at the 1961 Bayreuth Festival, the first black singer to appear there.

Bumbry's voice was rich and dynamic, possessing a wide range, and was capable of producing a very distinctive plangent tone. 

In her prime, she also possessed good agility and bel canto technique, as for example her rendition of Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlo in the 1970s and 1980s. She was particularly noted for her fiery temperament and dramatic intensity on stage. 

Later, she also became known as a recitalist and interpreter of lieder, and as a teacher. 

From the late 1980s on, she concentrated her career in Europe, rather than in the United States. 

A long-time resident of Switzerland, she spent her last years in Vienna.

Lawrence Brownlee

is a Foundational Black American Operatic Tenor particularly associated with the bel canto repertoire. 

Describing his voice, Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera, said: "There are other singers that sing this repertory very well, but I don't think anyone else has quite as beautiful a sound and as rounded a tone," and praise his "incredible top notes", adding about his high F  in "Credeasi, misera": "With him it's not a scream, it's a beautiful sound." 

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato added: "He is always in service of the music. 

His natural instrument is just incredibly beautiful. 

The word 'honey' comes to mind. 

He also has technical prowess and agility. Brownlee was born in Youngstown, Ohio. 

He grew up without much exposure to classical music but had an extremely musical childhood, playing trumpet, guitar and drums, and singing Gospel music in church. 

His first gigs were at an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, singing pop and show tunes. 

Brownlee attended Anderson University in Indiana for his undergraduate degree and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music for graduate studies. 

He studied with tenors Dr. David Edgar Starkey and Dr. Fritz Robertson, and soprano Costanza Cuccaro. 

Marian Anderson

 was a Foundational Black American Contralto. 

She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals. 

Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965. 

Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for Foundational Black American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. 

In 1939, during the period of racial segregation, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. 

The incident placed Anderson in the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. 

With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the Lincoln Memorial steps in the capital. 

James DePreist

was a Foundational Black American Conductor. 

DePreist was one of the first Black American conductors on the world stage. 

He was the director emeritus of conducting and orchestral studies at The Juilliard School and laureate music director of the Oregon Symphony at the time of his death. 

DePreist was born in Philadelphia in 1936. 

He was the nephew of contralto Marian Anderson. 

He was in the 202nd Class at Central High School, Philadelphia, graduating in June, 1954. 

DePreist studied composition with Vincent Persichetti at the Philadelphia Conservatory while earning a bachelor's degree at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958. 

On the side, he played percussion in a jazz quintet that performed on "The Tonight Show" with Steve Allen in 1956, and did enough composing to win a commission from the Philadelphia Dance Academy. 

That commission gave DePreist his first chance to conduct