Lucinda Bragg Adams

Lucinda Bragg Adams (née Bragg, also known as Lucie Bragg Anthony;[1] 4 December 1870-22 August 1932)[2] was an African American physician, educator, temperance leader, musician, and writer.[3]

Dr.

Lucie Bragg Anthony

M.D.
Born
Lucinda Bragg

4 December 1870
Warrenton, North Carolina
Died22 August 1932
Baltimore, Maryland
Resting place Mount Auburn Cemetery
Alma materOberlin Conservatory of Music (1893); Meharry Medical College (1907)
Occupation(s)Physician, educator, temperance leader, musician, writer
Employer(s)Sumter County Colored Schools (supervisor); The Musical Messenger (associate editor)
Notable workLittle Clusters: a Mixed Method for Beginners (1925)
Spouses
  • John Wesley Adams;
Francis W. Anthony
​
(m. 1908)​
RelativesGeorge Freeman Bragg (brother)

She was known throughout her life by several (single and married) surnames, including Bragg, Peters, Adams, and Anthony.

Early life and education

She was born Lucinda B. Bragg in 1860 in Warrenton, North Carolina, the daughter of George and Mary Bragg.[4] She moved shortly afterward to Petersburg, Virginia, where her family had roots. Her grandmother had founded Petersburg's St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. Her older brother was George Freeman Bragg, publisher of the Afro-American Churchman and the Church Advocate.[5]

Adams' family were close friends of John Mercer Langston, the first African-American Congressman, and Adams later dedicated her song Old Blandford Church to him.[6]

From ages 6 to 13, she was taken by a white missionary to Salem, New Jersey to attend a white school and receive a musical education (as there were yet no schools established for Blacks in Petersburg).[7]

She attended the Colored Schools of Petersburg. She graduated from Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1893, and received an M.D. degree from Meharry Medical College in 1907.[1]

Career

Adams was noted for her musical talent at a young age. She performed in the Petersburg region as a solo and ensemble singer (sometimes with the Selika Quartette), and as an organist, pianist, violinist, and guitarist.[1] Her musical compositions were circulated widely in Virginia.[8]

By 1877 she taught at the Normal School associated with Petersburg's St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. During this time she was a member of the musical board of Petersburg's Chorannesse Literary and Social Club. Her first husband Edward Peters was treasurer of a similar Petersburg club, the Aeolian Club. Lucinda left Petersburg in order to find opportunities to teach music (Petersburg's public school system didn't hire black teachers). By 1882 she was teaching in Danville, and in 1883 she became principal of the "colored school" in Harrisonburg.[7][9]

In 1885 she had composed a waltz, a march dedicated to J. E. O'Hara, several sacred pieces, and the song Old Blandford Church.[7] The latter is based on a poem found on the walls of the ancient church in Petersburg (written by a Eliza Hening of Petersburg, but often wrongly attributed to Tyrone Power[10]), and is the 2nd composition known to have been published by an African American woman (after Louise Smith's Forgive[11]).[1] She presented some of these compositions at a March 1885 meeting of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society; it's likely this is where she first met Amelia Tilghman.

Adams also had become an accomplished journalist and editor,[12] publishing, editing, and contributing to publications including the A.M.E. Church Review, Our Women and Children, the Petersburg Lancet, Afro-American Churchman, and the Church Advocate (many of these with her sister Carrie and her brother George).[1][13] In 1892, when Amelia Tilghman revived her pioneering music journal The Musical Messenger in Washington DC, she chose Adams (then living in Baltimore) as her associate editor.[14][7] Adams corresponded about musical life in Baltimore, and brought her experience and professional network to the paper. She secured the writing talents of Victoria Earle (who she knew from the A.M.E. Church Review) to write for the paper.[1]

After receiving her medical degree in 1907 and marrying A.M.E. minister F. W. Anthony in 1908, Adams moved on to a career away from music, journalism, or medicine and into education. Likely pursuant to F. W. Anthony's church assignments, the couple lived in Henderson, Kentucky where she was principal of Saint Clemens School, and San Antonio, Texas, where she was the principal of a church school. She taught kindergarten at the John Hopkins Home for Colored Children in Charlotte, North Carolina, and established the Industrial Department at Clinton College in Rock Hill, South Carolina.[7]

The pair settled in Sumter, South Carolina, where in 1915 she became the first supervisor of the Sumter County Colored Schools and worked there for 15 years.[15] She fought for fundraising, capital improvements, salary increases and increased teaching standards. In 1925 she wrote the elementary school reader Little Clusters for use in the district, which included original songs.[16] In 1931 she chronicled her work in A Concise History of Sumter County Colored Schools 1915-1931.

She died in Baltimore, Maryland in 1932. Some of her archives are held by the Sumter Historical Society.[16]

Marriages
  • Edward Peters, likely from ~1879 to ~1883[7]
  • John Wesley Adams, from 1887 to ?
  • Francis W. Anthony, an A.M.E. Zion minister, from 1908 to his death in 1928.[15]

References
  1. Karpf, Juanita (1997). "The Early Years of African American Music Periodicals, 1886-1922: History, Ideology, Context". International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. 28 (2): 159. doi:10.2307/3108447. ISSN 0351-5796. JSTOR 3108447.
  2. Beckford, Geraldine Rhoades (2013). Biographical Dictionary of American Physicians of African Ancestry, 1800-1920. Africana Homestead Legacy Pb. ISBN 978-1-937622-18-3.
  3. Smith, Jessie Carney (1996). Notable Black American women. Internet Archive. New York : Gale Research. ISBN 978-0-8103-9177-2.
  4. Majors, Monroe A. (2015). Accomplished: African-American Women in Victorian America (Abridged, Annotated). BIG BYTE BOOKS.
  5. Royster, Jacqueline Jones (2000). Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-8229-7211-2.
  6. Davis, Veronica A. (2005). Inspiring African American Women of Virginia. iUniverse. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-595-34730-8.
  7. Norris, Ethel Maureen (1994). Music in the black and white communities in Petersburg, Virginia, 1865-1900 (PhD thesis). The Ohio State University.
  8. Majors, Monroe Alphus (1893). Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities. Donohue & Henneberry. p. 215. lucinda bragg adams.
  9. Education, Virginia Department of (1885). Virginia School Report: Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Superintendent of Public Printing.
  10. "Image 1 of Seventy-five years in old Virginia; with some account of the life of the author and some history of the people amongst whom his lot was cast,--their character, their condition, and their conduct before the war, during the war and after the war". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
  11. Walker-Hill, Helen (1992). Piano music by Black women composers : a catalog of solo and ensemble works. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-06472-5. OCLC 65340497.
  12. Suggs, Henry Lewis (1983). The Black Press in the South, 1865–1979. Greenwood Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-313-22244-3.
  13. Royster, Jacqueline Jones (2000). Traces of a stream : literacy and social change among African American women. Pittsburgh. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-8229-7211-2. OCLC 607427678.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  14. Walker-Hill, Helen (2007). From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music. University of Illinois Press. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-0-252-07454-7. lucinda bragg adams.
  15. Notable black American women. 2. Detroit: Gale. 1996. ISBN 978-0-8103-9177-2.
  16. Anthony, Lucie Bragg (1925). Little Clusters. Baltimore: James A. Murray.


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