Leontyne Price: Touched by Greatness

Part 1

I couldn’t write a book about Laurel without mentioning Leontyne Price, the local African American girl who grew up to become the most renowned opera singer in the world. Yet I wanted to say something that hadn’t been repeated a million times before.

Here’s what I believed I knew for sure: Mary Violet Leontyne Price was discovered while doing chores in the mansion of a wealthy white woman. The Laurel banker’s wife, a very cultured and open-hearted lady was astonished when she overheard Leontyne  singing and promptly took the young girl under her wing. Paid for her schooling. Got her into Julliard. Opened the doors to high society. And before you know it, Leontyne Price is the star of the Metropolitan Opera, touring Europe, entertaining presidents, premiers and crowned heads. This was one of my favorite stories as a child. I wanted it to be true.

It sounded just like the Cinderella fairytale: a poor girl, a scullery maid perhaps, chafing her fingers raw, scrubbing the pots of rich folks, is one day magically transformed by a kindly fairy godmother into a beautiful princess.

It is a story that made me swell up with pride as a white Mississippian. It offset the hateful criticism that is often leveled against our State where race is concerned. In fact, after moving to Minneapolis, I’ve recited that story to skeptical Northerners more than once as evidence of white Mississippi’s benevolence toward blacks. It was a great defense against Sam Bowers and the KKK.

However, in the process of speaking with Laurel’s African Americans about Leontyne, my fairytale account was not much appreciated. I think what caused the most discomfort was my asking, “Do you remember when Mrs. Chisholm discovered Leontyne?”

When all else fails, listen. So I began asking for their accounts of how the opera diva got her start. And is often the case when I begin collecting stories across the color line, the telling of this familiar story changed. Many of the details were the same, but the center of gravity shifted. Mrs. Chisholm and her kind generosity is mentioned, but more as an afterthought. It was not the focal point of the story.

I learned from blacks who knew her, Leontyne’s greatness was seen as inevitable. Finding someone like Mrs. Chisholm to open up doors for her was destined. It was not charity. Leontyne was already “discovered.” If anything, her greatness discovered Mrs. Chisholm, not the other way around.

That is not the first time I’ve run into this predicament with African Americans. I assume that we are speaking the same language and then suddenly find we are reading off different scripts entirely.

The first time centered around the movie, To Kill A Mockingbird.  You know the story. The one in which the brave and honorable Atticus Finch takes up the cause of a hopeless black man, falsely accused of raping a white woman. I tear-up every time I see the movie. I want to be as pure as Atticus Finch. In fact, year after year, in the American Film Institute’s poll, he is voted the number 1 greatest movie hero of all time. I mean, who doesn’t love that story?

You’d be surprised.

I was discussing the movie with Don, a black friend of mine in Minneapolis, and he flat out said he wouldn’t let his kids see the movie or read the book.

I was dumbfounded. “Why not? It makes us feel so good about each other.”

“That movie makes white people feel good about themselves. But it makes black folks sick to their stomachs.”

Don explained that to him the story reinforces the lesson that blacks are helpless victims and they have to find a white man to save them. “It’s flattering to you as a white man. It’s humiliating to me as a black man. I want my kids to have more self-respect. I don’t need anyone else telling them that they are victims.”

That was a real eye-opener. Same movie, different morals. Who was right? It sounded a lot like the arguments I’ve gotten into over O.J!

Blacks who remember the Price family don’t deny the importance and the generosity of Mrs. Elizabeth Chisholm. They love her for what she did. But they believe that Leontyne was touched by greatness long before this benevolent lady came along. Yes, Mrs. Chisholm is still an important piece of the story, but she is not the story.

In fact, there are two other women, both black, who replace Mrs. Chisholm in the starring role. One is Leontyne’s musical mentor Mrs. Hattie V.J. McInnis, a teacher not only at Oak Park Vocational High School, but a life-long educator to the entire community. The other was Laurel midwife Mrs. Kate Price, not only Leontyne’s mother, but a mother all her people could claim.

What I discovered was a long-ago, almost forgotten, web of community. It was an invisible village, a conspiracy that operated under the radar of Jim Crow. To a large degree it was led by proud, strong-willed black women, unwilling to let segregation and discrimination deprive their children of a splendid future. The goal was to ensure that found greatness was not an accident. That children did not have to depend upon luck or charity to achieve their dreams. Their conspiracy launched surgeons, lawyers, political scientists, college professors, star athletes, Army generals, concert pianists, and yes, operatic superstars. Each summer throngs of alumni still find their way back to the shrine of Oak Park to pay homage to those who have gone before, who nurtured them and protected them from the disease of self-hate and despair.

Mrs. McInnis and Mrs. Price are gone now, as are many in that conspiracy. I’ll be writing more about them. There are only a few folks left to tell their story, and to grieve their loss.

It is indeed a new day, filled with great promise and hope for equality.  But many of the remaining elders in the black community look at the current state of the village and wonder, who will re-weave the web that discovers greatness in each child?

Perhaps there is still much we can learn from them while their voices are still with us. Perhaps we should ask.

In future columns, you’ll be hearing from the elders. I’m interviewing people like Mrs. Elner Andrews, Rev. Catherine Arrington, Mrs. Gladys Austin, Mrs. Mrs. Rose Donaldson, Mrs. Macie Gore, Mrs. Bertha Crowell, and Mrs. Rose Thompkins. I’ll ask these gracious ladies to share lessons, memories and counsel on how to weave a web of community greatness. If there are others whom you think should be heard from, please let me know.

Leontyne Price: Touched by Greatness

Part 2

“There was complete stillness in the sanctuary. The great diva stood in majestic pose. The hands had come to rest in an angelic, prayerful attitude. The shoulders lower almost imperceptibly. She was in complete control of the moment. Then she began to sing. ‘Oh, Holy Night,’ rose up in a voice that was so much fuller than I had ever heard. She made the room feel larger, more spacious than the 400-seat sanctuary. She was using the entire room as her instrument. And then when she got to the soaring verse, ‘Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel’s voices,’ someone in the balcony screamed a great scream of emotion. It was a powerful moment.”

Those are the words of Jerry Donaldson, describing to me his cherished memory from Christmas, 1962. Only a junior at Oak Park High School, he had been chosen to accompany the legendary Leontyne Price for the special Christmas Service at Laurel’s St. Paul’s Methodist Church. That moment, Jerry told me in our phone conversation, was life-changing. He was inspired to become a successful musician himself. On that day, Jerry was no doubt touched by greatness. But how did that moment come to be? How did a 16 year old boy find his way into such an auspicious position?

It was by no accident. I’ve learned that during Jim Crow there were two indicators of greatness for children in the black community. One was to graduate from Oak Park and the other was to be birthed by Miss Kate Price, Leontyne’s mother, the community midwife. If you had one of those things in your favor, you had a good chance.

Jerry Donaldson had both. Miss Kate attended his mother at his birth in 1945 and he graduated Oak Park in 1963. And he has gone far. He’s an accomplished concert pianist who lives now in Berkley, California.

“Oak Park was a point of pride,” Jerry says. “It attracted dedicated professionals who had experiences to expand our dreams. And because of Masonite, you had a strong middleclass. With a middleclass you can attract and pay teachers. We got teachers who had a lot of world experience. We could have been very closed and provincial people. But instead we were involved in the world.”

That’s the way Oak Park was in those days. Cleveland Payne, a Laurel historian, writes beautifully of Oak Park Vocational High School and its role in shaping life and culture in the black community from 1928 until its doors closed in 1970.

At Oak Park, Jerry Donaldson’s music teacher was Mrs. Hattie V.J. McInnis, Leontyne Price’s former mentor.

“In music room at school,” he recalls, “Mrs. McInnis hung pictures over the blackboard of Leontyne Price and Roland Hayes, and Natalie Hendaris, all accomplished black musicians. She would put these images in front of us and groom us. She gave us something to aspire to.”

And just as Mrs. McInnis had groomed Leontyne years earlier, her duty was now to champion Jerry. It was customary for Mrs. McInnis to accompany Leontyne at her Laurel performances. But this time, Mrs. McInnis claimed she was getting too old and requested that Jerry stand in for her. Jerry believes it was Mrs. McInnis’s way of saying, “You’re time has come.” It was to be a rite of passage.

When he showed up at the Price house to meet Leontyne for the very first time, Jerry soon got the feeling that everybody was in on the plan except for the great diva.

He rang the bell. “I was in great anticipation. Foolish enough not to be nervous,” Jerry remembers. Then from somewhere in the house heard Miss Kate call out, “Oh, Leontyne, there’s a young man to see you!”

What followed was a not too encouraging exchange of words between mother and daughter. It was clear that this was not Lenotyne’s idea. After a long, nervous wait, Miss Kate appeared as if nothing at all was amiss and lead Jerry back to meet her daughter.

“I walked into her room and there she was, her regal head wrapped in a turban and looking very world-weary from her travels. She pronounces dryly, ‘Mother says, you are going to play for me tomorrow at church.’”

“’I say, ‘Yes.’”

“’I have some songs that are not going to be too hard,” she said, studying him warily. ‘Perhaps we should go over to the church and practice.’”

And that began a twenty-year relationship. He went to hear her perform every chance he got, beginning with those packed and famously “integrated” Oak Park recitals in segregated Laurel.

“A few whites always reserved their seats together,” he recalls. “They got the first four rows. The ladies were heavily furred and gentlemen were sheepish, having been hauled out for the cultural event.”

When she toured a city near where he was studying or working, she always put Jerry on her guest list for visitations backstage after the shows. She displayed a keen interest in his future, offering phone numbers of contacts who could advance his career.

Once she asked what his plans were, and he told her he was saving to buy a Steinway grand piano. Much to the consternation of her manager who was in the dressing room with them, she pulled out her checkbook and wrote him a $400 check for the down payment. The last time he saw her was in San Jose. She was in her eighties.

Jerry has no doubt that he owes a great deal to Leontyne Price. But he reserves his highest praise for that conspiracy of women who recognized his greatness and who decided that his time had come.