Helen Hagan
(By Eugene Hutchinson)
Helen Hagan in YMCA uniform.
From Hunton & Johnson,
Two Colored Women in the AEF
Elizabeth Foxwell writes:
Helen Eugenia Hagan (1891–1964, Yale 1912) was the only black
performing artist sent to WWI France, where she played for more than
100,000 black troops under the aegis of the YMCA. She was the first
black pianist to perform a solo recital in a New York concert venue
(1921) and was the first black woman appointed to the chamber of
commerce in Morristown, NJ (1931). Her Concerto in C Minor (1912) is her
only surviving work. Despite her achievements, she lies in an unmarked
grave in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, CT. Join the effort to
commemorate her life and career with a proper grave marker
Helen Hagan, black pianist for the AEF
After earning her bachelor of music degree from Yale in 1912 and
studying in France, pianist Helen Eugenia Hagan (1891–1964) entertained
black troops in France in spring/summer 1919—one of the 19 black US
women with the YMCA (that included Helen Curtis, Addie Waites Hunton,
and Kathryn Johnson) who served abroad during or just after the war.
Hunton and Johnson’s Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces (1920) refers to Hagan as “the only colored artist sent to France” (p. 153), and the Pittsburgh Courier
dubs her “the darling of the doughboys.” (Her 1912 passport application
describes her as a 5-foot-2 music teacher with an “olive” complexion.)
As part of the “Proctor Party”
formed by request of General Pershing, she accompanied Joshua E.
Blanton, who taught spirituals to the servicemen, and Congregational
minister Henry Hugh Proctor, who delivered sermons and led the soldiers
in folk songs. Proctor wrote in Between Black and White (1925),
“The transformation of these dejected men was almost instantaneous when
they forgot themselves in song” (p. 158). Proctor placed the number of
their total audience at more than 100,000 (p. 160); the entry on Blanton
in Who’s Who in Colored America (1942) places the number at
275,000. (Blanton, a Hampton graduate, established the St. Helena
Quartet to foster the preservation and performance of spirituals; he
later served as principal of the Voorhees Institute in South Carolina.)
Hagan returned to the United States in August 1919 on the Nieuw Amsterdam.
Prior to her service in France Hagan had taken up a position
in November 1918 as music director (meaning music dept chair) at
Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College (aka Tennessee State
University). She married John Taylor Williams of Morristown, NJ, in
August 1920 (a 1932 letter
from Hagan to W. E. B. Du Bois hints at a 1931 divorce). In October
1921, she became the first black pianist to perform a solo recital in a
New York concert venue. In 1931 the NAACP magazine The Crisis stated
that she was the first African American woman to be appointed to the
chamber of commerce in Morristown. Still performing in public, she
pursued graduate-level work at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Starting in 1933 she taught at Bishop College in Texas and also gave
private music lessons in New York. Hagan died in March 1964 and is
buried in New Haven’s Evergreen Cemetery next to her parents (join the effort to place a marker recognizing Hagan’s achievements on her unmarked grave).
Comment by email:
Mr. Zick, Thanks for posting my information on Helen Hagan on AfriClassical.
Thank you, Elizabeth Foxwell
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