Black and White: 1940s Grinnell

1940s Grinnell was about as white as it had ever been. Several African American families still had homes in town, but as children left Grinnell and older family members passed away, the population of Blacks shrank. Altogether only about a dozen African Americans resided in 1940s Grinnell whose total population the 1940 US Census put at 5219.

Similarly, Grinnell College was almost entirely white in these years: the college did not appoint its first Black to the faculty until 1964, and when Edith Renfrow graduated in 1937, she was the lone Black in the student body. As a result, in the 1940s Black men and women were rare on the  campus where the Depression and World War II had driven student enrollment down to 321 by 1943.

Nate Towles Orchestra and Its Sleeper Bus (September 1940)
(https://events.timely.fun/zgbi8ufc/event/68170404)

And yet into this very white small-town world came a series of Black musicians, artists, and performers. Newspapers reported that Grinnell's white audiences enthusiastically received these Black men and women, frequently demanding encores and additional contact with the visitors. Today's post examines the intersection of Black and white in 1940s Grinnell with an eye to understanding what racial difference meant to a very white community some eighty years ago.

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1940s Grinnell welcomed numerous musicians and special speakers, mostly at the invitation of the college which each year arranged a concert series that included a half-dozen performers. The overwhelming majority of these visiting artists and speakers were white, just like Grinnell itself. But almost every year at least one Black artist appeared to perform either at the college's Herrick Chapel or in the auditorium of the High School downtown. 

The most frequent Black musician to visit Grinnell in these years was Nat Towles who brought his orchestra to the college where it provided the music for several college dances. 

Scarlet and Black March 4, 1939

Although born in New Orleans, Nat Towles (1905-1963) spent much of his adult life in the Midwest where, beginning in the 1930s, he headquartered his dance orchestra. From its base in Omaha, the Nat Towles fifteen-piece orchestra played at dances all over the north central states. According to the college newspaper, Grinnell students danced to the music of "Lots of Poppa" Towles at least four times between 1939 and 1949. In March 1939 the class of 1940 had Towles play for the junior prom (Scarlet and Black, 3/8/1939). Six weeks later, college women in James, Haines, and Read hosted the Black orchestra for a "southern colonial" dance in Quad dining hall (ibid., 4/22/39). Just after the war ended, the college Gadabouts hired the orchestra for its dance (ibid., 11/8/1946), and had the "all-Negro" orchestra return three years later for a dance in the women's gym (ibid., 1/21/1949). 

Undated Photo of Nat Towles
(Scarlet and Black January 21, 1949)

One might imagine that the arrival of sixteen Black musicians in 1940s Grinnell would have caused a stir, bringing into Grinnell more Blacks than resided in town at that time. But because the band played only for college events, townsfolk seem to have taken little notice. I found only one reference in the Grinnell Herald-Register to the orchestra's appearance in Grinnell, the newspaper omitting mention of the orchestra's all-Black membership (GHR 3/13/1939); subsequent visits earned no notice in the Herald-Register, since, after all, the dances were strictly college events. The college newspaper, of course, paid attention to all the band's visits, regularly pointing out the racial identity of the musicians. A brief S&B story that preceded the orchestra's 1939 visit called the group a "negro band" and a 1946 story welcomed "the all-Negro band" (Scarlet and Black 3/8/1939; ibid., 11/8/1946). 

Despite the low visibility of the band in town, townsfolk may well have learned about the visitors. For one thing, chaperones for college dances always included, along with the president and his wife, several deans and a half-dozen faculty and spouses. Indeed, for its 1949 dance the Gadabouts invited "the entire faculty," so that townsfolk who lived in homes near college faculty will have heard about the visit of the all-Black orchestra. Nevertheless, since Towles had his group travel in a specially-designed sleeper bus, the musicians did not have to seek rooms in local hotels as most other college visitors had to do. Therefore, except perhaps for having seen the unusual vehicle enter or leave town or having heard from college administrators or faculty about the orchestra, Grinnell residents had no reason to know that sixteen Blacks had been to town.

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The 1947 Harlem Globetrotters
(https://www.nasljerseys.com/EBA/Rosters/Globetrotters_EBA_Rosters.htm)

In March 1941 another group of Black men came to town. Thanks to an invitation from Grinnell's Jaycees, the Harlem Globetrotters, an all-Black basketball team, arrived to play against a group of Grinnell "All Stars." Founded in Chicago in 1926 and renamed several times afterward, the Globetrotters toured the country—and later, the world—to compete and entertain, usually playing against all-white opponents. On the first of March 1941 the five or so Black men ("colored flashes," said the Herald-Register [2/27/1941]) and their white owner/coach, Abe Saperstein, took on a group of white Grinnell basketball stars at the college gym before some 350 sports fans. The Grinnell Herald-Register told readers that the "clowning Negroes had little trouble in winning the game," their comedy routine keeping "onlookers in an uproar a good share of the time." The Globetrotters ("colored boys," said the Scarlet and Black [3/1/1941]) especially impressed the audience with their ball handling and passing when, toward the game's end, all ten Grinnell players came onto the court trying—in vain—to outplay their five Globetrotter opponents (3/3/1941).

The appearance of the Globetrotters in Grinnell seems not to have occasioned much mention. But one wonders: where did the men eat and spend the night before heading on to their next engagement? Did a Grinnell restaurant and a Grinnell hotel offer accommodations, despite the rarity of Black guests—not to mention five or six Black guests at once? On the heels of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, Saperstein had purchased a used Model T into which he crammed the five men of the "travelling team" (Ben Green, Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters [NY: Amistad, 2005], 51). So long as the Globetrotters were performing in the Midwest, the Model T was sufficient, although, of course, it provided no beds. Consequently, in each town where the Globetrotters played, Saperstein had to find a place that would accept Black guests. Racial bias emerged often as the Globetrotters criss-crossed the country, but if Grinnell's hotels and restaurants resisted the Globetrotters, the newspapers said nothing about it. 

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1936 Photo of Dorothy Maynor
(https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/maynor-dorothy-leigh-1910-1996/)

The following year Grinnell welcomed to the concert stage Dorothy Maynor (1910-1996), contralto soloist. Born into a churchman's family in Norfolk, Virginia, Maynor gained most of her early music training in church. She later enrolled at Hampton where she majored in Home Economics but sang in the choir. Graduating in 1933, Maynor won a scholarship to Westminster Choir School where she studied conducting and received a degree in 1935. After a brief stint teaching at Hampton, Maynor moved to New York where she studied voice. After performing to much acclaim with the Boston Symphony, Maynor made her Town Hall recital debut in New York in November 1939. Reviews were very complimentary, encouraging Maynor to book concert tours here and abroad. When she first sang at Grinnell, therefore, her career and fame were still young (Patricia Turner, Dictionary of Afro-American Performers [NY: Garland Publishing, 1990], 262-63; Randye Jones, "Dorothy Maynor").

The Herald-Register made no secret of Maynor's racial identity, headlining its story "Famous Negro Contralto to Sing Here" (10/12/1942). The Grinnell newspaper's review, published two weeks later (10/26/1942), was admiring and congratulatory, indicating at one point that Maynor's voice was "able to perform miracles." There was also praise for Maynor's rendition of art songs of Schubert and Debussy, all of which greatly pleased the audience which demanded several encores (GHR 10/26/1942).

But the Grinnell reviewer, like others who heard Maynor in Boston and New York, could not resist stereotyping the soloist.

The great contribution which Miss Maynor, as a Negro singer, can give and is giving is in the interpretation of the Negro spirituals, a type of folk music native to her race...The spirituals, assembled during the days of Negro bondage, constitute a body of music of unique charm which can be sung effectively only by Negroes (GHR 10/26/1942).

Black commentators took exception to racial stereotyping like this. For example, Elmer Carter (1889-1973), writing in Opportunity, a publication of the National Urban League, joined in the praise of Miss Maynor's explosive success, likening her to the better-known Marian Anderson (1897-1993). But Carter rejected reviewers' racialization, observing that 

the art of neither Miss Anderson nor Miss Maynor is particularly Negroid. They  have proved that there are no racial limitations to musical interpretation...they have attained not only technical mastery of, but understanding and feeling for, the music of the Italian and the German, the French, the Spanish—no less than the music of their own race and country ("Dorothy Maynor," Opportunity 28, no. 2 [February 1940]:34).

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Undated Photo of Anne Wiggins Brown
(https://www.operabaltimore.org/annebrown)

The entire town seems to have taken notice when Anne Wiggins Brown (1912-2009), "better known as Bess of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess," visited Grinnell. Born in Baltimore to parents whose ancestry was African, Cherokee, and Scots-Irish, the future soloist attended Morgan State and Columbia University's Teachers' College, all with the aim of becoming a teacher. Brown also continued to study voice, earning certificates in 1932 and 1934 from what became the Juilliard School (Darryl Glenn Nettles, African American Concert Singers Before 1950 [Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.,], 30-31). Then she met George Gershwin (1898-1937) who, after having heard her sing the spiritual, "City Called Heaven," rewrote and renamed his opera to feature Bess, the role that Brown would famously play. Porgy and Bess, which premiered in 1935, catapulted Brown to instant fame. 

Consequently, Brown's visit to Grinnell generated much excitement. The campus newspaper announced that Brown would open the 1943-44 college concert series, hard on the heels of having played herself in the new film based upon Gershwin's life, Rhapsody in Blue (S&B 10/1/1943; 10/15/1943)). The Herald-Register reported that the "sensational original star of George Gershwin's negro opera Porgy and Bess" was coming to town (GHR 10/21/1943). Post-concert reviews were even more expansive. The Herald-Register did not employ the racial stereotype with which it had described Dorothy Maynor; instead the newspaper called Brown a "lieder singer of fine attainments," possessing "a well-trained soprano voice of concert calibre." Lauding the soloist's ability to vitalize the songs she sang, the Grinnell reviewer barely mentioned "two superbly rendered spirituals," concentrating instead upon the European art songs of the program. Emphasizing the appreciation of the many soldiers in the audience, the newspaper judged that Brown had brought down the house (ibid., 10/25/1943).

Brown returned to Grinnell the following autumn, as college president Samuel Stevens told the Scarlet and Black, which described the soloist as a "negro lyric soprano" (9/29/1944). Likewise, the town's newspaper in 1944 welcomed the return of the "famous Negro soprano who scored an immediate success when she appeared in recital here last year." The Herald-Register told readers that Brown had "displayed a beautiful voice combined with a gift for dramatic interpretation which made her concert one of the most popular of the series" (11/16/1944). A few days later the Herald-Register lavished compliments upon the "talented Negro artist" who endowed songs with such drama as to draw the audience into their spirit. The large and "rapturous" audience "loved it all and was insistent with its evidences of appreciation" (ibid., 11/20/1944).

The relatively light attention paid to Brown's race, especially at her first visit in 1943, might have depended in part upon her appearance. Because of her mixed ancestry, Brown was not always identified as Black and sometimes "passed" as white. "I've lived a strange kind of life," she told Barry Singer many years later: 

half black, half white, half isolated, half in the spotlight. Many things that I wanted as a young person for my career were denied to me because of my color. On the other hand, many black folks have said, 'Well, she's not really black.'..Onstage, though, if they couldn't take me as I was—the hell with them" (Barry Singer, "On Hearing Her Sing, Gershwin made 'Porgy' 'Porgy and Bess," New York Times 3/29/1998). 

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In between Brown's two Grinnell concerts Langston Hughes (1902-67) came to town. Of all the Black artists who appeared in 1940s Grinnell, Hughes was probably the best known. Born to well-educated parents in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes grew up mostly in the company of his mother, as his parents had separated when the future poet was just a boy. His single-parent mother, therefore, found it necessary to move often throughout the Midwest, with stops in Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas; Lincoln, Illinois; and Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from a Cleveland high school, Hughes moved to Mexico City to live briefly with his father. Soon he was back in the US to study at Columbia University, but withdrew to begin extensive travels abroad, visiting numerous ports in Africa and spending time in Paris. When the money ran out, he returned to the United States and to his mother, who by then was living in the District of Columbia. In 1925 Hughes won a poetry contest in Opportunity magazine and obtained his first book contract that resulted in The Weary Blues (1926). A second volume of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew, appeared in 1927. Meantime, Hughes enrolled at Lincoln University from which he graduated in 1929 (Notable Black Men, ed. Jessie Carney Smith [Detroit: Gale, 1999], 580-84).

1942 Photo of Langston Hughes (Jack Delano, 1942; Library of Congress)
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Langston-Hughes)

Invited to Grinnell College in 1944 by the "social budget committee," Hughes brought to town a legacy of poetry, essays, plays, and autobiography. As the Scarlet and Black observed in announcing the visit, Hughes had been "largely concerned with depicting Negro life in America," and much of that work has appeared in "Negro publications" (4/21/1944). A second article that advertised his visit pointed out that the college library, to mark their guest's appearance, was featuring an exhibit of Hughes's publications, including The Ways of White Folks (1934), The Big Sea (1940), Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Not without Laughter (1930), "Freedom's Plow" (1943), and Popo and Fifina (1932), which he had written with Arna Bontemps (1902-73) (4/28/1944). Whether the student journalist was familiar with these works may be doubted as the newspaper mangled several of the titles. All the same, it is clear that Hughes's visit was a big moment on campus.

The town's newspaper also touted the arrival of Hughes, although the text seems to have depended rather heavily upon the original announcement in the Scarlet and Black (4/24/1944). Calling Hughes a "Noted Negro poet," the Herald-Register recognized the great variety of Hughes's works, and told readers that Hughes would "give readings from his poetry Sunday evening" in Herrick Chapel. In fact, however, Hughes used the chapel platform to deliver what the Scarlet and Black called an "informal autobiographical talk" which "bore obvious traces of social propaganda." Although Hughes concluded the talk by reading several unpublished poems, his presentation seems to have emphasized the "economic suppression of his race" in the United States and elsewhere in the world (including Africa). The student journalist complained that Hughes "made no tangible suggestions for alleviating the situation," reinforcing the journalist's suspicion that he was a "propaganda poet" (5/5/1944).

Postcard that Langston Hughes Wrote in Grinnell, April 30, 1944
(Courtesy of Grinnell College Library Special Collections and Archives)

How Grinnell's townsfolk responded to Hughes is hard to gauge; the Herald-Register did not review his talk, which may tell us all we need to know on that score. But unlike the other African American visitors of the 1940s, Hughes did leave slight traces of his visit. A postcard that Hughes sent from Grinnell on the same day as his college talk survives in the college archives; alas, the poet had no comment upon the college or town. Hughes also used his Grinnell visit to send a letter to his friend and occasional collaborator, Arna Bontemps. Like the postcard, the letter is dated April 29, 1944, and begins by reporting that Hughes had found a room in a Grinnell hotel (Arnold Rampersad identifies the hotel as the Monroe [The Life of Langston Hughes, 2 vols. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1986-88], 2:85) that had "refused to house Marian Anderson a year or so ago—but here it is housing me!" (Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters, 1925-1967, ed. Charles Howard Nichols [NY: Dodd Mead, 1980], 164). So far as I could learn, however, Anderson never visited Grinnell, let alone been shut out of a room here, so Hughes must have had in mind another African American—perhaps Dorothy Maynor or Anne Wiggins Brown, although so far I have found no evidence that either was refused a room in Grinnell.

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Undated Photograph of Roland Hayes
(https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/roland-hayes-1887-1977/)

Roland Hayes (1887-1977), a well-known tenor soloist, opened the 1945-46 Grinnell concert series. Born to freed slaves in Georgia, Hayes was living in Chattanooga, Tennessee when an Oberlin Conservatory student heard him sing, and encouraged him to pursue more musical training. Intending to enroll at Oberlin, Hayes ended up at Fisk where he studied several years without taking his degree. But he continued to sing, and his career received a boost after a 1917 concert that he himself arranged at Boston's Symphony Hall. Past thirty and not yet enjoying enough attention to live off his concerts, Hayes decided in 1920 to leave America. Studying and concertizing in Europe (where he performed before King George V and Queen Mary), Hayes developed a reputation that "disillusioned the curiosity-seekers and chastened the gossip-mongers." Alain Locke, quoting a critic about a concert in Vienna, told readers of the newly-founded journal Opportunity that Hayes had become a "sensation," "not as a Negro, but as a great artist." "Indefatigable work [during his European sojourn]...has made a seasoned artist of a gifted, natural-born singer" (1[1923]:356). Success in Europe gave new impetus to Hayes's career, energizing concert tours across the United States in the 1930s and 1940s (Turner, Dictionary, 198-208; Notable Black American Men, 526-528).

The Grinnell Herald-Register welcomed the "celebrated Negro tenor," advertising a "varied program" scheduled for Herrick Chapel on October 15, 1945. As usual, the bulk of Hayes's program depended upon classical European composers—Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Saint Saens, and others. But the program ended with the emphasis upon African American music, including Hayes's own arrangements of three spirituals (GHR 10/11/1945). One week later the newspaper review observed that Hayes had sung "many perfect songs," the highlight of which the reviewer judged the unaccompanied rendition of "the familiar spiritual, 'Was [sic] you there when they crucified my Lord?'"

While he was singing it was as though the audience was holding its breath. One could have heard a pin drop and when he was through it seemed that applause might well be dispensed with. All the suppressed love and yearning and aspirating of an enslaved race had been expressed through that simple melody (ibid., 10/18/1945).

Apparently Hayes sang to a full house, as the newspaper claimed that "every seat in the chapel was taken and chairs on the platform did not accommodate the overflow." Delegates to the Congregational Christian conference helped swell attendance, but the review took pains to report that college students and townspeople alike were in attendance (ibid.).

Frequently denied stays in hotels because of his race, and beaten and jailed by whites at least once in the 1940s, Hayes nevertheless thought that post-war America had demonstrated progress in race relations. He hoped that he had helped lessen the division between peoples. "When I began my career," he wrote, "I realized that if I would speak to all men, I must learn the language and the way of thought of all men...So I learned to sing the songs of all people. The song I sing is nothing. But what I give through the song is everything" (Elizabeth Nash, Autobiographical Reminiscences of African-American Classical Singers 1853-Present [Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007], 135). 

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Camilla Williams (1919-2012) reached Grinnell in late November 1947. Born in Virginia in 1919, Williams, like some other Black musicians of that era, received her earliest musical training in church. She took a degree in music education from Virginia State College in 1941, after which she taught for a time in a hometown elementary school. Soon she was living in Philadelphia where she studied languages at the University of Pennsylvania and voice with Marian Szekeley-Freschi. Her big break came with winning the Marian Anderson Award in 1943 and again in 1944. After having impressed Geraldine Farrar, the well-known opera soprano, at a 1945 concert, Williams earned an audition with the New York City Opera with whom she soon signed a contract (the first steady contract of a Black woman with a major opera company) and with whom she debuted as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly in 1946. There followed a series of very successful concert and opera appearances (Turner, Dictionary of Afro-American Performers, 391-92; Southern, Biographical Dictionary, 403; Notable Black American Women, 2:712-13). Newsweek (5/27/1946) featured a story about her operatic debut, and the National Urban League put her photo (as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly) on the cover of its winter 1947 issue. Consequently, when Williams appeared in Grinnell in 1947, although still only 27 years old, she was wildly popular, having been named the "First Lady of American Opera" by the Newspaper Guild (Notable Black American Women, 2:713). 

1960s Publicity Photo of Camilla Williams
(Elizabeth Nash, "A Day with Camilla Williams," The Opera Quarterly 18, no. 2 [spring 2002]:227)

The college newspaper welcomed "the talented young negress" to Grinnell, advising readers of the various achievements in Williams's then still-young career (Scarlet and Black 11/7/1947). Much the same prose appeared in an article published on the eve of her November 21st concert, but the newspaper added the complete program, which noted that Williams began the last section by singing "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess as well as three spirituals. The student review was brief and focused upon the "lovely pianissimo on high tones" and the "color and brilliance of her voice," but did point out that Williams, responding to the crowd's applause, sang several encores (ibid., 12/5/1947).

The Herald-Register acknowledged the fame surrounding the visitor, calling her a "high ranking Negro soprano." Judging her program "exacting," the reviewer praised her "ample vocal equipment [that] qualified [her] to sing everything from grand opera to Negro spirituals." Saying little about the spirituals included in the last part of the concert, the newspaper praised her rendition of songs of Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms as well as several opera arias (11/24/1947).

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Other than the polite—sometimes even boisterous—applause with which Grinnell audiences favored the performers, what, one wonders, did white Grinnell make of its Black visitors? For instance, when college students danced to the music of "Lots of Poppa" Towles and his orchestra, did they wonder why no Black men or women were dancing with them and the only Black people in the room were in the band? And when Grinnellians gathered to listen to Anne Wiggins Brown or Roland Hayes sing, did they wonder at the rarity of Blacks in the audience...or in their town? Did they think that the amazing Globetrotters were exceptions to a presumed inferiority of Blacks? We have scant evidence with which to answer questions like these. 

Certainly 1940s America remained acutely aware of race. Not only did Jim Crow thrive in the South, but occasionally episodes of racial hatred blazed brightly in the news. Take, for example, the May 1943 story out of Selfridge Army Air Base near Mount Clemens, Michigan where the base commander, Col. William T. Colman, used his .45 pistol to shoot Pvt. William R. McRae, a Black man who was behind the wheel of Colman's vehicle. It turns out that Colman had issued a standing order "never to be sent a Negro chauffeur," so the furious commander fired two shots into the belly of McRae. The segregated U.S. Army also was responsible for the 1943 "race riot" at Shenango Depot in Western Pennsylvania, the consequences of which minimized the shots directed at Black U.S. soldiers.

Scarlet and Black 12/13/1939

Some Grinnell college students—like Virginia Foote '45—were aware of horrors like this, and attempted to rouse students to protest ("Letter to the editor" in S&B 10/22/1943). But the campus itself was hardly overflowing with racial tolerance. The college's 1939 Honor G club initiation, for instance, had as its theme "negro 'jimdandies' and 'mammies,'" and obliged initiates to "act the part of man and wife, appearing in public with blackened faces and carrying laundry or buckets of water" (Scarlet and Black 11/25/1939). A 1945 survey by students in a race relations class found that of some one hundred Grinnell women who were asked if they had race prejudice, seventy denied it. Yet almost a quarter of those inventoried were unwilling to have Blacks admitted to the college and half did not want to have "Negro blood plasma" administered to them. Many respondents admitted that they did not even want to sit next to a Black in class (ibid., 5/4/1945). 

And yet during these same years the campus gave evidence of changing attitudes to race. The college's post-war seminar that began in 1942 examined race prejudice, and in February 1943 announced its support for admitting Blacks to the college:

One way to combat the rising tide of race prejudice is through active association. One contribution which we could make, one gesture of amity, and one expression of good will is to get two or three negro students for this college (Scarlet and Black 2/26/1943).

This rather modest recommendation seems to have gained force over time. A 1945 editorial in the campus newspaper acknowledged that "Admittance of colored persons [to Grinnell] would automatically mean the withdrawal of a number of white students." In other words, the editorial acknowledged that racism flourished on campus, even if it was not universal. However, the newspaper argued that justice demanded that the college admit Blacks. 

Can we keep our tongues in our cheeks as we bewail the conditions that Negroes in America endure?And if we decide that segregation is the best policy, that we can learn all we need to know about the Negro in a semester course in race relations, that we are incapable of seeing a man's worth regardless of his color, then let's quit all this hypocritical bellowing by students and administration about the Grinnell spirit of democracy and equality (ibid., 12/14/1945).

The number of Black students on campus rose slightly over the next several years, and the exchange program with Hampton brought a small number of additional Black students to Grinnell so long as the program survived. Even with these changes, however, 1950s Grinnell College, like the town which was its home, remained a bastion of whiteness.

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PS. My thanks to Harley McIlrath who, some time ago alerted me to the visit of Langston Hughes and his comment about Marian Anderson. His heads-up got me thinking about Blacks who visited Grinnell and the reception they received.