The principal, George Whitefield Chadwick, encouraged Florence to compose, which turned out to be life-changing advice. In just three years at the conservatory, she gained a soloist’s diploma in organ and a teacher’s diploma in piano, and she was the only one of 2,000 students to pursue a double-major in organ and piano. Five of the best works by Clara SchumannĪt the age of 14, Smith graduated as high school valedictorian and two years later, in 1903, left Little Rock to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts where there were only one or two other students of colour (she won her place after following her mother’s advice to present herself as being of Mexican descent).It was an exciting time, with the blossoming of an African-American belief in equal opportunity and equal cultural value as promoted by the fiery Jamaican pan-Africanist orator Marcus Mosiah Garvey, who toured 38 US states in the early 20th century.
The young Florence, steeped in the tenets of the Harlem Renaissance that coursed through the veins of the ‘10 percenters’, entertained her parents’ high-profile guests on the piano. Du Bois, had benefited from a classical education and who had the potential to lead American society.Īt their Little Rock home, Smith’s parents hosted many gatherings of African-American intelligentsia, including the piano prodigy ‘Blind’ Tom Wiggins, Du Bois himself and educator Booker T Washington. Charlotte Stephens, who over a 70-year teaching career influenced many notable alumni in other fields of endeavour, taught both Smith and Still, as well as the equally-noted composer, William Dawson.Ĭlearly gifted, the Smith family was considered to be one of the ‘10 percenters’, people that, according to the Harlem Renaissance philosopher and activist W. It may have been a coincidence, but a comparably noted African-American composer, William Grant Still, was one of Price’s classmates. Six of the best works by Florence Priceįlorence Smith, however, grew up at a time and place in the American South where middle-class African-American families could at least progress to a limited degree, which was certainly not the case for African Americans in other parts of the US.He was also a successful painter who exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He was possibly the only African-American dentist in Little Rock at that time and, because of his colour, had to overcome innumerable hurdles to qualify.
Florence’s father, Dr James Smith, was a notable dentist and inventor of patented dental implements. She was also a music teacher and taught her daughter the piano. The young Smith’s mother was a wily entrepreneur who ran a restaurant, sold property and served as secretary of the International Loan and Trust Company. It was a time when anyone of African heritage in North America was seen as an under-class, no matter their status, so the impact of her remarkable parents can never be underestimated. The youngest of three, Florence was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on 9 April 1888 to James and Florence Irene Smith. Price’s life was typical of that lived by middle-class African Americans at the turn of the 20th century.
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