Nerissa Brokenburr Stickney

Nerissa Brokenburr was born in Indianapolis, the elder daughter of attorney Robert Brokenburr and his first wife, Alice Jean Glover Brokenburr. Her father served in the Indiana Senate, and was a civil rights activist.[1] She graduated from Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis in 1929.[2][3] As a teen in 1927, she was a soloist at the annual meeting of the Indiana Convention of Negro Musicians.[4]

Her sister Alice was also a musician; both sisters studied piano and organ at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.[5] and were members of Delta Sigma Theta. She earned a B.A. degree in 1933 and a Mus.B. degree in 1935.[6][7][8] While at college, she was secretary of Oberlin's Scottsboro Action Committee, an anti-lynching group, and co-signed a report on racial discrimination at Oberlin.[9]

She was friend of Indianapolis clubwoman Louise Terry Batties from their teens,[10] and was a bridesmaid at the Terry-Batties wedding in 1937.[11]

Immediately after Oberlin, Brokenburr gave a "sound, intelligent, and musical" recital in Indianapolis,[12][13] and taught music at Florida A&M University (then known as Tallahassee State College) in Florida from 1935 to 1940. She performed often on piano and organ for the school's evening vespers program.[14][15][16] In 1939 she attended the annual convention of the Association of Music Teachers at Negro Schools, held at Fisk University.[17] In 1940 she married a fellow instructor at the college.[18][19]

Nerissa Brokenburr married fellow educator William Homer Stickney Jr. (1902-1982) in 1940. They lived in Prairie View, Texas,[20] and had three children together, Janice, William, and Roberta.[7] She died after a heart attack in 1960, aged 47 years, at a hospital in Houston, Texas.[21]