BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " DOROTHY MAYNOR " WAS A SOPRANO, CONCERT SINGER AND THE FOUNDER OF THE HARLEM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

  BLACK             SOCIAL           HISTORY                                                                                                                                         Dorothy Maynor

Dorothy Maynor (September 3, 1910 – February 19, 1996) was an American soprano, concert singer, and the founder of the Harlem School of the Arts.

Early life

Maynor was born Dorothy Leigh Mainor in 1910 to Reverend J. Mainor, a local African-American Methodist minister in the town of Norfolk, Virginia. She attended the Hampton Institute where she studied under R. Nathaniel Dett. After her graduation from the Institute in 1933 she received a four year scholarship to the Westminster Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey.^[1]

Career

In 1939, she performed at the Berkshire Festival where she was noticed by Sergei Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Impressed by her singing, he arranged her debut at The Town Hall in New York City on 9 December 1939. She received the Town Hall Endowment Series Award for 1940 as a result of this performance.^[2] In New York, she was taught by voice instructors William Clamroth and John Alan Haughton.^[3] Despite the fact that racism precluded her from performing in opera houses, Maynor toured extensively throughout the USA, Europe, and Latin America, performing in concert halls and frequently on the radio. In 1964, she founded the Harlem School of the Arts which was designed to give music education at a reduced rate to the children of Harlem.^[4] Under Maynor's directorship the school grew from 20 students to 1,000 by the time of her retirement in 1979. She received honorary degrees from several universities including Westminster Choir College, Oberlin College, The Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford), and two degrees from Howard University. In 1975, she became the first African-American on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera. She died on 19 February 1996 in West Chester, Pennsylvania.^[5]

Personal life

In 1942, she married Reverend Shelby Rooks, the pastor of Harlem's St. James Presbyterian Church where the Harlem School of the Arts was originally located. After her retirement from the School, Maynor moved to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania with her husband.^[5]