The New York Times
May 24, 2017
William Grimes
In
spring 1957, two weeks before the opening of Henry Purcell’s opera
“Dido and Aeneas” at the University of Texas at Austin, Barbara Smith, a
19-year-old mezzo-soprano, received some bad news. She would not be
appearing as Dido, a role she had been rehearsing for months.
Ms.
Smith was black. The singer cast as Aeneas was white. In the South,
then emerging only slowly from strict segregation, this was a problem,
even though the two principal characters do not kiss, embrace or even
touch.
Joe
Chapman, a Democrat in the State Legislature from Ms. Smith’s own
district in the pine country of Northeast Texas, had taken the matter up
with Logan Wilson,
the university’s president. During their conversation, Mr. Chapman had
told him that the opera’s casting might be bad publicity for the school,
especially since the Legislature was preparing to vote on an
appropriations bill.
Three
days before the opera was scheduled to open, The Houston Post broke the
story, under the headline “Negro Girl Out of UT Opera Cast.” The Daily
Texan, the student newspaper, followed with an article the next day. Its
reporter asked Mr. Chapman, a former Texas railroad commissioner, if he
believed that the Legislature had the right to dictate policy to the
university.
“There’s no question about it,” Mr. Chapman said.
In
a statement, the university said that it had made the casting change
“to ensure Miss Smith’s well-being and to squelch any possibility that
her appearance would precipitate a cut in the university’s
appropriations.”
More than 100 students rose in protest. Eight state legislators
expressed indignation. A petition circulated, gathering 1,500
signatures. Mr. Chapman was hanged in effigy from a balcony in the State
Capitol.
Ms.
Smith tried to smooth matters over. “After the first shock and hurt had
passed,” she told The Daily Texan, “I began to realize that the
ultimate success of integration at the university is much more important
than my appearance in the opera.”
As
wire services and Time magazine picked up the story, national figures
spoke out, including Sidney Poitier and Eleanor Roosevelt. The singer
Harry Belafonte stepped forward, offering to pay for Ms. Smith’s musical
education at any school in the world.
She
chose to remain at Texas and, after earning her music degree in 1959,
went on to a successful operatic career under the name Barbara Smith Conrad,
appearing at major opera houses around the world, including the
Metropolitan Opera in New York, and performing in concert with leading
symphony orchestras.
“My heart wanted to go to Fisk,” Ms. Conrad told The New York Times in 2011,
referring to the historically black university in Nashville. “But you
didn’t run away if your staying could make a difference — it could
encourage other black kids. Mostly, it was a matter of pride.”
Ms.
Conrad died on Monday in Edison, N.J. She was 79. The cause has not yet
been determined, said Bettye Neal, a cousin. Ms. Conrad had advanced
Alzheimer’s disease.
Barbara
Louise Smith was born on Aug. 11, 1937, in Atlanta, Tex., south of
Texarkana. Growing up, she divided her time between Queen City, where
she attended school, and the family house in Center Point, an all-black town near Pittsburg, Tex., that had been founded by freed slaves, among them her forebears. It no longer exists.
Both
her parents were college-educated teachers. Her mother was the former
Jerrie Lee Cash. Her father, Conrad, served in the Army during World War
II and the Korean War. When Barbara began her singing career and
applied for an Actors Equity card, she took his name to avoid confusion
with another Equity member with the same first, middle and last name.
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