Eileen Jackson Southern was born February 19, 1920 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Walter Wade and Lilla (Gibson) Jackson and was the eldest of two or three daughters. Southern attended public schools in Minneapolis, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and, finally, Chicago, where she graduated from Lindblom High School, majoring in commercial art. Her parents divorced when she was 8 years old but Southern remained in close contact with her father, a chemistry professor and violinist, thus beginning what would become her passions of teaching and music. Southern gave her first piano recital at the age of 12 and made her debut in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall at age 19, playing a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Musical College Symphony Orchestra. Although she studied the traditional white classical genius of Bach and Beethoven, her music teachers, most of whom were white, also felt it important that she learn about black musicians such as R. Nathanial Dett. Also during this time she won piano-performance and essay competitions, taught piano lessons, and directed musical activities at the Lincoln Community Center. She attended and received degrees in musicology from the University of Chicago [BA, 1940, and MA, 1941) and began her teaching career at the Prairie View University in Hempstead, Texas (1941–1942) where she met, and later married, Joseph Southern; they had two children, April and Edward.
After leaving Texas, Southern was assistant professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1943–1945 and again from 1949–1951) as well as teacher for the New York City Board of Education and instructor (1960–1964) and assistant professor (1964–1969) at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Throughout the 1940s and until the mid-1950s Southern also pursued a career as a concert pianist. According to her husband, the life of a concert pianist didn’t appeal to her, and so turned her focus to scholarship, particularly the origins and development of black music. Southern received her PhD from New York University in 1961. Continuing her career in education she served as associate professor (1969–1971) and professor (1972–1974) of York College, City University of New York. In 1974 Southern began her tenure at Harvard University serving as lecturer in music and in 1976 she received full professorship and a dual appointment in Afro-American studies and music. With her new dual post Southern became Harvard’s first black female tenured professor and was appointed chair of the Afro-American Studies Department, serving from 1975–1979; she retired from teaching in 1987.
Southern also authored, co-authored, or contributed to many works on musical history and black American music, including The Buxheim Organ Book (Brooklyn: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1963), The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971 and 3rd edition, 1997), Readings in Black American Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971 and 2nd edition, 1983), Anonymous Chansons in MS El Escorial Biblioteca del Monasterio, IV a 24 (1981), Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance, 1630–1920; An Annotated Bibliography (with Josephine Wright, New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), Nineteenth Century African-American Musical Theater (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), as well as contributor of numerous articles to professional journals. From 1973 to 1990, Southern along with her husband, produced and served as editors for the well respected biannual journal The Black Perspective in Music. Southern also received several honorary degrees including the masters of art from Harvard University in 1976 and a doctorate of arts from Columbia College Chicago in 1985.
Southern was active in the Girl Scouts U.S.A. from 1954 to 1963, as chairman of the management committee for the Queens Area YWCA from 1970 to 1973; held active memberships in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the International Musicological Society, the American Musicological Society, the Sonneck American Music Society, the Renaissance Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and Alpha Kappa Alpha. Southern also received numerous awards over the course of her lifetime; included are the Alumni Achievement award from University of Chicago (1970), the Deems Taylor award from the American Society of Composers (1973), the Peabody Medal from Johns Hopkins University (1991), the National Humanities medal from the President of the United States (2002) and she was a grant recipient from the National Endowment of the Humanities (1979–1983).
In 1992, her fellow scholars prepared a book of essays dedicated to her works: New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern (Warren, Mi.: Harmonie Park Press). To quote Dr. Samuel Floyd in the Introduction of New Perspectives, “Because of Eileen Southern, the field of black music has certainly advanced from being viewed as a branch of music containing ‘just jazz and a few spirituals,’ to being recognized as a field of study supported by histories, topical studies and reference sources of all kinds.” Other works Southern authored, edited, co-authored, or co-edited include: Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture (1770s–1920s) (co-authored with Josephine Wright; New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), African American Theater: Out of Bondage (1876) and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad (1879) (New York: Garland, 1994); Documentary History of the National Association of Negro Musicians (Chicago: NANM History Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, 2003); Southern and her husband retired to Florida in 1987. Eileen Southern died October 17, 2002 after living with Alzheimer’s for several years.
| Center for Black Music Research
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