Queer Places:
E Adams St & Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
Nora Douglas Holt (November 8, 1884 or 1885 – January 25, 1974) was
an
American singer, composer and music critic, who was born in
Kansas and
was the first
African American to receive a
master's degree in the United States. Nora Holt, a good
friend of Carl Van Vechten's by the mid-1920s, was a singer
and nightclub hostess and at the time a hit in Paris, where she was known
as "la Creole blonde." She was also the model for the character Lasca Sartoris in Van Vechten's controversial novel Nigger Heaven (1926). Holt was also a
close friend of
Anita Thompson.
Holt composed more than 200 works of
music and was associated with the leading figures of the
Harlem Renaissance and the co-founder of the
National Association of Negro Musicians.
She was born Lena or Lora Douglas in
Kansas City, Kansas, in either 1884[1][2]
or 1885[3][4]
(the exact year of her birth is contested) to Calvin Douglas, an
African Methodist Episcopal Church minister, and Gracie Brown Douglas. Her
mother encouraged her to start piano lessons at age four, giving her an early
affinity for music and leading to her playing organ for several years in St.
Augustine's Episcopal Church in Kansas City. Her father Calvin was a presiding
elder with the AME Church and was on the board of trustees for Western
University, eventually writing the words for the school song, "O Western U."
for the dedication of Grant Hall in 1907. Nora Holt wrote the music for this
song but destroyed the score in a dispute for authorship between her and her
music professor who only helped with some of the harmonies.
She graduated valedictorian from
Western University at
Quindaro, Kansas in 1917 with a bachelor's degree in music. In 1918 she
earned her master's degree in music at
Chicago Musical College, becoming the first African-American person to
earn a master's degree in music composition in the United States. In the late
1930s, Douglas also studied music education at the
University of Southern California. At the
Chicago Musical College, her thesis composition was an orchestral work
called Rhapsody on Negro Themes.[5]
She later studied Fountainbleau, France.[6]
by Carl Van Vechten
Douglas was married five times. At the age of 15 she married a musician
called Sky James, then two years later married politician Philip Scroggins,
followed not long afterwards by a marriage to a barber named Bruce Jones.[7]
In 1916, she married her fourth husband, white hotel owner George Holt, taking his
name and changing her first name to "Nora".[8]
In August 1913 the Pekin Theatre, famous queer venue, was sold to George Holt,
white, who was the proprietor of the Brunswick Hotel (demolished in 1910) in
Chicago. When George Holt died in 1921, Nora inherited his fortune.
From 1917 to 1921 Holt contributed music criticism to the
Chicago Defender, a black daily newspaper. She published and edited a
journal, Music and Poetry, for a brief period in 1921 and in the
magazine, Nora Douglas Holt contributed an essay, “The chronological history
of the NANM,” that placed her in history as the co-founder of two of the most
important organizations of black classical musicians in America, the Chicago
Music Association and the National Association of Negro Musicians(1919).
Holt then spent 12 years abroad in Europe and Asia, where she sang at night
clubs and private parties. By 1926, when she left for Europe, she had composed
more than 200 works of orchestral music and chamber songs, which she placed in
storage before departure. Upon returning, she discovered that all her works
had been stolen. Only one piece survived, as it had already been published. It
was called Negro Dance, a
ragtime-like
piano piece.[9]
During the 1920s, Holt was known as a wild
socialite.
She was wealthy due to her inheritance from her late husband George Holt. In
1923 she married Joseph Ray, assistant to tycoon
Charles Schwab, in her fifth marriage. They moved to
Pennsylvania.
Carl Van Vechten. Gladys Bentley, Prentiss Taylor, and Nora Holt, 1932 Feb. 27. Prentiss Taylor papers, 1885-1991. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
After the break-up of this marriage 19 months later, she took the name of
her former husband, changing it from Ray to Holt[10].
She moved to Harlem in the early 1920s, where she became an important part of
the
Harlem Renaissance. She became good friends with novelist and critic
Carl Van Vechten.[11]
While studying music at the University of Southern California in the 1930s,
she also taught music in Los Angeles for several years, and also ran a beauty
shop, and became involved with the Los Angeles school board.[12]
In 1943 she took a position as an editor and music critic with a
black-oriented publication
Amsterdam News.[13]
In 1945, she began the annual “American Negro Artists” festival on radio
station WNYC, and from 1953 through 1964 she was the producer and musical
director of a weekly program, “Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase” on Harlem’s WLIB
radio station. In 1966 she was a member of the
First World Festival of Negro Arts in
Dakar, Senegal. Among many of the honors she receive during her lifetime,
one of the most prestigious was her election to the
Music Critics Circle of New York.[14]
Nora Holt died January 25, 1974, in
Los
Angeles.
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Holt
- American Cocktail
Anita Reynolds
Harvard University Press, Feb 24, 2014