The Black Scholars Index

Dr. Eileen Southern: Black Music Scholar and First Black Full Professor at Harvard

Posted on 01. Jul, 2009 by Leshell Hatley in Faculty, I'm a Full Professor!, Scholarly Celebrations

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Dr. Eileen Southern - Harvard Gazette Archives

Dr. Eileen Jackson Southern was a noted author and researcher of African-American music and the first Black woman appointed as a tenured full professor at Harvard University.  

Dr. Southern made tracing the history, evolution and impact of Black music her life mission. In 1973, she and husband Joseph Southern, a professor, founded Black Perspectives In Music, the first musicological journal on the study of Black music, which she edited until the journal ceased publication in 1990. Other works include The Music of Black Americans: A History and the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians.

Her scholarship earned her a National Humanities Award in 2001 for helping to “transform the study and understanding of American music” and the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society of American Music.

Music was a part of Dr. Southern’s life early on. Although Minneapolis was her birthplace, Eileen Jackson cut her musical teeth in Chicago, where her childhood home was a hot spot for Black musicians. She studied piano and made her first concert appearance at age 7.

In 1941 she received her master’s from the University of Chicago with her thesis, The Use of Negro Folksong in Symphonic Form. She later taught at Black colleges in the South and in New York at CUNTs York College, where she was promoted to music department chair. In 1961, she earned her Ph.D. at New York University.

In 1974 Dr. Southern went to Harvard as a lecturer. Two years later she received a dual appointment in Afro-American studies and music. She headed the department of Afro-American studies from 1975 to 1979 and retired in 1987.  She died in 2002 at the age of 82.

Read more about her in the archives of the Harvard Gazette.

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Tags: Anthropology, Benjamin Banneker Charter School of Cambridge Massachusetts, Black Female Music Scholar, Black Scholars Index, Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Eileen Southern, First Black Full Professor at Harvard University, Gammon Theological Seminary, Harvard Institute of Educational Managemen, Harvard University, Head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program, Johnson C. Smith University became the first HBCU “Laptop” university, National Forum of Black Public Administrators, Scholarly Celebrations