Name Harriet Marshall | ||
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Harriet Gibbs Marshall (1868–1941) was a Canadian-born African-American musician, writer, and educator best known for opening the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression in 1903 in Washington, D.C.
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Early years and education
Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Harriet Aletha Gibbs was the daughter of Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas, who became the first African-American city judge in the United States, and the former Maria Ann Alexander, a school teacher. There was one sister, Ida Alexander Gibbs.
In 1889, Gibbs became the first African-American woman to graduate from Oberlin Conservatory with a degree in music.
Career
In the last years of the 19th century, she founded the music program at Eckstein Norton University in Cane Springs in Bullitt County, Kentucky. In 1900, Gibbs moved to Washington, D.C. and took the position of music supervisor in the then segregated African-American public schools there.
She founded the Washington Conservatory of Music in 1903. It focused on classical European music. In 1911, an elocution program was added, and the school was renamed the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression.
In 1906, Gibbs wed Napoleon Bonaparte Marshall, a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. 1897) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1900).
Marshall joined the Bahá'í Faith in 1912. She hosted Bahá'í events at the Conservatory.
Marshall traveled to Haiti in the 1920s when her husband, Captain Marshall of the United States Army, was appointed to a commission to investigate abuses during the United States occupation of Haiti.
During their time in Haiti, the Marshall's were excluded from participation in social activities with other U.S. military officers because of racial segregation. Marshall became active with Haitian organizations, and was Vice-President of the Organization of Haitian Women. While there, she co-founded the Jean Joseph Industrial School.
When the Marshalls returned to the United States, they founded the Save Haiti Committee to lobby President Herbert Hoover to remove U.S. soldiers from Haiti. In 1930, Harriet Marshall published The Story of Haiti: from the discovery of the island by Christopher Columbus to the present day. In 1936, Marshall wrote the script for The Last Concerto, a musical spectacle based on the life, love, and music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Marshall died on February 21, 1941 in Washington, D.C.