Music and Segregation

Nobody but me will care about this, but this is where Sonny Til, lead singer of the Orioles, grew up:



I've also just learned that in high school, Til was in a singing quartet with the school's music teacher, W. Llwellyn Wilson, a legendary figure in Baltimore's music scene. In addition to teaching music at Douglass High School (which served black students in West Baltimore) he was principal cellist and then conductor of the City Colored Orchestra, and music critic for the Baltimore Afro-American. One of the ambivalent facts of life before desegregation was that segregated black schools often had amazing faculty, with a startling percentage of teachers holding doctoral degrees. The music curricula at segregated schools in the urban northeast were often particularly noteworthy, featuring a level of training in music theory not to be found at many schools today. This was all due, of course, to the fact that talented and well-educated black teachers like Wilson were usually summarily rejected from university teaching positions, leaving segregated secondary schools as their only option.

But this is all to say, although Til always claimed not to have formal musical training, that story might actually be bit more complicated!