Harvard’s First Black Female Professor Dies

Eileen J. Southern, the first black female professor at Harvard, died last Sunday in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. She was 82.

Southern is best known for her 1971 work, The Music of Black Americans: A History, which is still widely credited as one of the definitive texts in the field.

“There has been no work that can match that work in its scope,” said Rosita M. Sands, director of the Center for Black Music Research. “It was the first time somebody attempted to write a complete history of black American music.”

Carol Oja, president-elect of the Society for American Music, contrasted the groundbreaking nature of Southern’s work with her quiet manner, calling her a “very gentle revolutionary.”

“She single-handedly brought the civil rights movement to musicology,” Oja said.

Between 1973 and 1990, Southern published the influential scholarly journal, The Black Perspective in Music.

In April, Southern received the National Humanities Medal. At the ceremony, President Bush praised her as “a pioneering musicologist who has helped us understand the power of African-American music.”

Eileen Jackson was born in 1920 in Minneapolis, Minn. As a child, she established herself as a prodigious piano player. She played her first concert at the age of seven and continued to perform throughout the country for much of her life, eventually playing Carnegie Hall in 1948.

She graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelors degree in 1940, and received her masters degree from the same institution in 1941.

Between 1951 and 1961, she studied at New York University under the influential renaissance music scholar, Gustave Reese. She earned her doctorate in 1961, writing a dissertation onrenaissance music.

Watts Professor of Music Kay K. Shelemay said Southern was often dismayed by her colleagues’ failure to recognize her work in renaissance music and their expectation that she be an expert in black music.

“Life gave her lemons...and she didn’t just make lemonade, she made a feast,” Shelemay said, referring to Southern’s decision to eventually focus on black music.

In 1975, Southern was appointed to a joint professorship in Afro-American studies and music by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. One year later she became the second chair in the history of the fledgling Afro-American studies department, a position which she held until 1980.

Southern’s tenure at Harvard was often marred by conflict, which she wrote about in an essay, “A Pioneer: Black and Female,” published in the 1993 anthology Blacks at Harvard. Southern wrote of her efforts to garner respect both for herself and for the young department.

“I went to Harvard because it was a great opportunity for me as a black female scholar, and I accepted the reality of racial and sex discrimination,” wrote Southern.

“She did not let it phase her,” said longtime friend and collaborator Josephine Wright, a former Harvard Faculty member who is now a professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio. “She was a scholar and she knew what she was doing.”

Southern retired from the Faculty in 1986. She continued to work and research while living in St. Albans, N.Y.

Those who knew her described her as soft-spoken and dignified. Shelemay made note of Southern’s reserved nature, recalling that she responded only to written notes and not telephone calls.

Among the awards won Southern won were the Outstanding Contributor to Music Award from the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1971, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the National Black Music Caucus in 1986 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Music in 2000.

She is survived by her husband, two children and a sister.