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Brevard, Lisa Pertillar
About the author: Dr. Brevard received her PhD from Emory University. She is currently Dean of Humanities and Associate Professor of English and African World Studies at Dillard University, New Orleans, LA. An internationally recognized scholar and musical artist, her projects include the 1997 National Public Radio series “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” (the Civil Rights radio documentary); and “Wade in the Water”: African American Sacred Music Traditions (1994), a 26 hour National Public Radio/Smithsonian Institution project, which received a 1995 Peabody Award and national Education Association Award. Since 1987, Dr. Brevard has been affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution as a researcher in African-American traditions.
2001 0-7734-7575-3Madame E. Azalia Hackley was an African American classical singer, social worker, writer, philanthropist, and activist who championed the use of African-American spirituals among the African-American people as a tool for social change. Her efforts laid the groundwork for the use of spirituals as freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. This work used newspaper accounts and archive studies documenting Madame Hackley’s tours cross-country and abroad to raise funds for African-American classical musicians. It show Hackley’s intense devotion to her African-American roots, as she easily could have passed for white. Nevertheless, she traveled throughout the South in ‘Jim Crow’ railway cars by choice. This work also recovers several of her influential published works, including A Guide to Voice Culture (1909); The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916), an etiquette book for African-American women desiring professional jobs; and “Hints to Young Colored Artists”, a series of articles designed to help young African-American classical musicians succeed. Includes illustrations.