MARKER BIOGRAPHIES

"What I dream of is changing the image held by the children… We’ve made them believe that everything beautiful is outside the community. We would like them to make beauty in our community."—Dorothy Maynor 

Making beauty within the Harlem community was not only the dream of Dorothy Maynor, the founder/director of the Harlem School of the Arts, but , due to her vision and conviction, it also became a reality. A successful and internationally known concert soprano, Maynor changed her career as a solo artist into her lifework of training, advocating for, and teaching all genres of artistic expression to young Harlem residents. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, her father, Reverend John J. Maynor, was the pastor of Norfolk’s St. John’s Methodist Church, where Maynor discovered her vocal gift singing in the church choir.  She was well-rounded.  Under her mother’s tutelage, she became proficient at needle arts and cooking; her father frequently took her hunting and fishing, and Maynor became an expert marksman. Her parents taught her to appreciate her dual Native American and African American heritages.  Although the family was affluent by the standards of the time and lived a prosperous life in a lovely two-story home in Norfolk’s Black community, Maynor was acutely aware of racism, particularly in a state that institutionalized paper genocide against Indigenous peoples.  

Maynor’s teachers recognized that the local African American schools were inadequate for her burgeoning talent and rallied for her to be educated outside the Norfolk area.  In 1924, when she was only fourteen, her parents enrolled her in the prestigious Hampton Institute Preparatory Program, which was nearby.  Dorothy thrived academically and culturally in the school and intended to become a Home Economics teacher, but in her second year, her plans changed dramatically. Encouraged to audition for the esteemed Hampton Choir, under the direction of Robert Nathaniel Dett, she was “discovered” and set her sights on a career in music. Dett chose her as soloist in the choir’s performance at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Maynor’s performance stunned the critics, which led to other solos with the choir at Symphony Hall in Boston and the Music Festival at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. She was the star of the Hampton Choir’s 40-city tour of Europe in 1930. Although Dett had left Hampton by the time she received her master of science degree in music from the college in 1933, she maintained contact with her former mentor, and he composed six settings of Negro spirituals especially for Maynor.  After graduation, she earned a scholarship to Westminister Choir College, in Princeton, New Jersey, where she earned a second bachelor’s degree in music with a specialty of choral conducting in 1935. Her supporters urged Maynor to continue her vocal studies, which led her to move to New York City to study with the prestigious maestros Wilfried Klamroth and John Alan Haughton for three years. She opted to change the spelling of her name from Mainor to Maynor for professional reasons while training in New York. 

The famous Berkshire Festival in Massachusetts became the impetus for Dorothy Maynor’s unique voice to become a global sensation. She performed at the Festival and earned the admiration of Sergei Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was reported that upon hearing her sing, Koussevitzky jumped up and down and declared Maynor’s voice “a miracle” and “a musical revelation that the world must hear!” He sponsored her debut at New York’s Town Hall for a sold-out performance, which earned the vocalist rave reviews. Legendary bass-baritone Paul Robeson attended her after party.  Maynor found herself becoming more popular and was booked for another concert at Carnegie Hall, this time accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1940, New York music critics unanimously voted her the winner of the Town Hall Endowment Series Award.  Racism precluded her from singing in opera houses, but Maynor still toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Latin America, performing in concert halls with most of the major American orchestras. Her repertoire featured arias from dozens of operas; a fan favorite was her rendition of “Depuis le jour" from Charpentier's "Louise," which became her signature piece, and always received standing ovations.  In 1942, she married the Rev. Shelby Rooks, pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem.  A devout supporter of his wife’s talent and dedication to the music arts, he encouraged Maynor to start an arts education program. On April 21, 1947, the St. James Community Center, Inc. was incorporated.  Housed in the basement of her husband’s parish, Maynor had twelve piano students.  The organization would later become the Harlem School of the Arts.

Musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky wrote that she had "a soaring, bell-like soprano capable of exquisite musical effects, supported by a sincere and ardent temperament."  In 1975, Maynor, never able to sing at New York's Metropolitan Opera because of her race, became the first African American to join its board of directors. Maynor’s many other achievements include being awarded honorary degrees from several universities including Westminster Choir College, Oberlin College, The Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford), and two degrees from Howard University. She recorded several albums of arias and songs for RCA Victor. The famous conductor, Arturo Toscanini, directed and recorded her in the role of Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio, although bigotry excluded her from performing in opera houses.

In 1964, the renowned songstress retired from performing and put all of her efforts into developing the Harlem School of the Arts (HAS) full-time.  Dorothy Maynor grew the small program that started with just a few piano students into a full-fledged school with classes available free or at a very low rate in every art from several music genres to diverse dance styles to musical theater to dramatic theater to visual arts for tens of thousands of Harlem young people, ages two through eighteen.  If students do not have instruments, they are provided by HSA.  She called upon her contacts within the art world for financial support and in just a few years moved from a church basement into a $2 million, 37,000-square-foot facility built to her specifications.  In 1969, Maynor was asked to pen an article for the Music Education Journal on the subject of Music in the Inner city.  In the piece, she laid out reasons why Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in the country’s cities were rising up against racism. “We are talking about the accumulated injustices and resentments, the studied and often legalized insults of three centuries….. Going back to the quite innocent phrasing of this topic, "Music in the Inner City," Why music in the inner city? What is so different about our part of town? Are we full-fledged citizens, or, is a trip to our inner-city neighborhood like a trip to the zoo?... No black child in this country can escape these bruising experiences. Just the other day, listening to a radio appeal to all who are not citizens of this country to register with the immigration authorities, a Harlem child asked his mother if she had registered-the clear implication being that this child had seen nothing in his lifetime to convince him that he really belonged there… It is a great mistake to assume that ghetto parents want less than the best for their children.”  Dorothy Maynor ensured that the Harlem School of the Arts would not only provide the education that Harlem parents wanted for their children, but offered a place where young people could explore their talents, develop discipline in their field, be taught by luminaries in every artform, learn how to navigate the world outside their neighborhood and flourish as artists.  The Harlem School of the Arts, thanks to its founder and director of almost two decades boasts an impressive list of alumnae in many different genres: Lenny Kravitz, Ray Chew, Condola Rashad, Giancarlo Esposito, Caleb McLaughlin, We McDonald, Matthew Whitaker, Ilfanesh Hadera, Zazie Beetz and Zora Howard to name a few.  In 1979, Dorothy Leigh Maynor retired from HSA, leaving a legacy that will only be perpetuated for decades to come as talented youth grow into confident, disciplined artists.  “We intend to keep knocking on the same door we have knocked on for the past one hundred years. We are going to knock louder; we may break the door down. But that door is the way we intend to get on the inside-not the back door, not through the roof, not by burning the house down.”