Maud Cuney Hare

Maud was born in Galveston, Texas, on February 16, 1874, to Adelina (Dowdy, or Dowdie in alternate spelling) and her husband Norris Wright Cuney. Both parents were of mixed heritage; her father was of majority-white ancestry. Her mother, one of the "handsome Dowdy girls", came from Woodville, Mississippi. Her father's ancestry was African, Indian, European, and Swiss-American. The Cuney children were a "second family" related to a large, wealthy and politically powerful white family headed by Gen. Philip Minor Cuney of Austin County, Texas, who had been born in Louisiana. He established a business of stevedore workers, employing about 500 men on the docks and organizing a union. Interested in Shakespeare and other great writers, Norris Wright Cuney sang and played the violin; Adelina Dowdy Cuney was a soprano singer and played the piano. Maud and her brother Lloyd grew up in a house filled with music and literature. ==Education==

After completing school at Galveston's Central High School in 1890, Maud Cuney went to Boston to attend the New England Conservatory of Music. There she studied piano with Edwin Klahre and music theory with Martin Roeder. She also studied at Harvard's Lowell Institute of Literature. When white students learned that Maud Cuney and another African American, Florida L. Des Verney, were living in a campus dormitory, some of them tried to have the young women excluded. Fearing financial pressure from white southern families, the Conservatory requested that the women find other lodgings, implying that their safety could not be guaranteed. Maud Cuney told the school that she refused to move. Her father also refused to move her, criticizing the school for dishonoring "the noble men and women" abolitionists of Massachusetts who had fought against prejudice. Members of the Boston black community spoke out against the Conservatory, as did black students, including Harvard Cambridge student W. E. B. Du Bois. The Colored National League took up the issue, and the Conservatory eventually reversed its position. Though Des Verney moved away, Maud Cuney stayed. She later wrote: "I refused to leave the dormitory, and because of this, was subjected to many petty indignities. I insisted upon proper treatment." Boston had a vibrant black community. While studying in Boston, Cuney became part of the Charles Street Circle (or West End Set), meeting at the home of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. She became a close friend of W. E. B. Du Bois, who was based in Massachusetts for a time, and they were briefly engaged. Du Bois described Maud vividly as "a tall, imperious brunette, with gold-bronze skin, brilliant eyes and coils of black hair." ==Teaching and performing career==

After graduating from the conservatory, Cuney returned to Texas, studying privately with pianist Emil Ludwig in Austin. She taught at the Texas Deaf and Blind Institute for Colored Youths in 1897 and 1898. She chose to oppose racial prejudice when management of the Austin Opera House demanded that Negroes in the audience coming to her performance must be segregated and seated in the balconies. She and Emil Ludwig cancelled the planned concert and performed instead at the Texas Institute for Colored Youths, where no distinction of color was applied. == Her parents deaths, marriage, and move to Chicago==

Maud's mother, Adelina Dowdy Cuney, died on October 1, 1895, of tuberculosis. her father died on March 3, 1898, of the same disease, which at the time was considered incurable, as antibiotics had not been discovered. ==Return to Boston==

After the divorce, Maud returned to Boston. She married William Parker Hare on August 10, 1904, In 1906, Maud gained access to her daughter during the summer months, but Vera died in 1908. It was a predecessor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909. Allied Arts Center founder Cuney Hare founded the Allied Arts Center in Boston, to encourage education and performance in the arts. In addition to providing funding and serving as a manager, she performed and lectured there. The Center had a 'Little Theatre' group, and offered classes and performances in art, music, and drama. Although open to all, its focus was the development and support of young black performers, composers, and playwrights. ==Writing==

Cuney Hare did extensive research as a musicologist. She traveled to Mexico, Cuba, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico to collect and study folklore and musical traditions. She was "the first music scholar to direct public attention to Creole music", publishing a collection of Six Creole Folk-songs with commentary in 1921. Cuney Hare wrote numerous articles about black music and arts. Throughout her life, She was a close friend and confidante of noted author and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, once writing to him in frustration over a lecture by Egyptologist George Reisner that she had attended. Cuney Hare was frustrated by Reisner's incorrect racializing claim about the ancient people. She edited a column on music and the arts for The Crisis, the magazine that Du Bois edited for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also contributed articles on these topics to the Christian Science Monitor, Musical Quarterly, Musical Observer, and Musical America. Northwestern University has a playbill for it. Cuney Hare never saw the published book. Suffering from cancer, which prevented her from playing the piano, but not from proof-reading her manuscript, she died before it was published. ==Death==

Maud Cuney Hare died on either February 13 or 14, 1936, in Boston, Massachusetts. A memorial service was held in Boston on February 17, 1936. ==Works==

• Norris Wright Cuney: A Tribune of the Black People (1913), a biography of her father. • Six Creole folk-songs : with original Creole and translated English text (1921) • "Portuguese Folk-Songs, from Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts", The Musical Quarterly [0027-4631], 1928, vol:14 iss:1, pp. 35–53 • Antar of Araby (1929), a play revolving around the life of the Arab/Abyssinian poet whose "valor" outshines his status as a slave a history of African-American music traditions from Africa to the American jazz age . ==See also==