Race, hate mail, and the Blues at a Girls High School

One hundred years ago today … Lucille Handy, daughter of blues innovator W.C. Handy, was being harassed by her fellow students at Julia Richmond High School, a girls school at 60 West 13th Street, over a dispute concerning race and music.

Lucille Handy was to perform some of her father’s compositions as part of a school-wide celebration of “America’s Making.” Other Black students objected to the performance apparently on the grounds that the Blues was a low form of Black culture, not one to highlight. Handy’s defense of the music was to distinguish it from jazz and ragtime, which would evidently be even more distasteful. 

The case was written about extensively by Lucien H. White, New York Age music critic whom we have featured before, in a column that is such a rich document that we have posted it in its entirety on this page. 

As White tells it, Handy was to perform some of her father’s compositions as part of a school-wide celebration of “America’s Making.” Other Black students objected to this plan, uncivilly, apparently on the grounds that the Blues was a low form of Black culture, not one to highlight. Handy’s defense of the music was to distinguish it from jazz and ragtime, which would evidently be even more distasteful. Handy’s defense of the music was to distinguish it from jazz and ragtime, which would evidently be even more distasteful. 

Then the story gets more sinister, as Handy received anonymous, threatening hate mail that was almost as absurd as it was sinister:

'Dear Miss Handy:

"As member of the colored girls circle we have investigated and found out that you are making a FOOL out of yourself in school. It is not appropriate for you to sing and dance the blues (JAZZ) at the May Party. If you do, it will be under the peril both death and great danger to yourself, Therefore we warn you to watch your step. In case you do dance (which we doubt very much) pin your curls? and beware of rotten eggs.  

BEWARE. THE COLORED GIRLS CIRCLE 

President-Ignatz; Secretary-Bum do Nut; Vice-President-Crazy Kat;

Treasurer-Booba Boob; Honorary Members–Mrs. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Rockefeller, Miss Tib." 

Having condemned the objectors’ intolerance, White uses the case as a springboard for a discussion of the blues, musing that “It will not be surprising if the ‘Blues’ is eventually placed in the same category as the Spiritual.” As for W.C. Handy, he predicts “it is only a matter of time when his work will be accorded its rightful place in the race's artistic development, alongside of the Negro Spiritual, and given the same recognition as is given the Russian folksong, the German lieder, the French chanson and the folksongs of England, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the other peoples of the world.” And Lucille Handy’s performance would thus be “entirely in keeping with the spirit of racial progress and development.”

Note: we wrote about W.C. Handy’s Pace and Handy Music Corporation for our August 14, 1920 post.

– Jonathan Goldman, April 23, 2021

TAGS: , African American music, blues, jazz, taste, Black arts, education