-
Prologue
- University of South Carolina Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
8 Prologue Slowly Sissieretta Joyner walked toward the taxi parked in front of her nineroom home on Wheaton Street high above the capital city of Providence, Rhode Island, in the area now known as College Hill near Brown University. She had a dollar in her purse, borrowed from her friend and benefactor, William P. Freeman, to pay for the cab ride to Rhode Island Hospital on this somewhat cool fourteenth day of June 1933.1 Freeman, a realtor and past president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had helped keep her afloat financially for the last several years. He may have even been there that day to wish her well. As she sat down in the back of the taxi, she took what would be her final look at her home of thirty-five years. Sissieretta died on Saturday, 24 June, from cancer of the stomach with metastasis to the liver.2 She was sixty-five and a half years old. Most likely no one at the hospital knew about Sissieretta’s famous and glorious past, when she was billed as the “greatest singer of her race” and called Madame Sissieretta Jones or “Black Patti,” a nickname created by the press to suggest a comparison to the world-famous European prima donna Adelina Patti (1843–1919). The doctors and nurses had probably never seen Sissieretta in her younger days, dressed in elegant evening gowns, wearing sparkling rings and necklaces of gold and precious stones. Instead they saw an old, heavy-set African American woman who was very sick and ailing, with no family members to comfort her during her final days. Funeral services were held at her church, Congdon Street Baptist, where she had worshiped and sometimes sung with the choir since leaving the stage eighteen years before. Freeman saw to it that she received a decent burial at Grace Church Cemetery, where her mother was buried, and was not left to rest in a pauper’s grave, although her grave, to this day, has no headstone. Sissieretta Joyner Jones and her parents moved from Portsmouth, Virginia, to Providence when she was very young. She got her start singing in Providence ’s black churches. She studied classical singing in Providence, Boston, and New York, sang opera and concert selections, and went on to become a : 1 : 2 : Sissieretta Jones household name in the field of popular entertainment. Sissieretta sang before four U.S. presidents; toured throughout Europe, Canada, the West Indies, and South America; sang at Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall in New York City; and entertained thousands in music halls and opera houses around the United States as the star of her own troupe, the Black Patti Troubadours . At one time she was the highest-paid African American female performer . Many black actors, musicians, dancers, composers, and comedians got their start in her troupe, with several of them becoming famous later in their careers. Sissieretta was a pioneer among African American entertainers. She was one of a handful of early black female concert singers who showed white America that black Americans could do much more than sing minstrel songs. At the same time, she was a source of pride to the people of her race. As biographer William Lichtenwanger said of Sissieretta in Notable American Women, “Despite a white public inclined to overlook her artistry and treat her as a freak, despite a Negro public too poor and uneducated to support her effectively , despite biased critics and mediocre management, Madame Jones forced the musical and theatrical worlds in the United States to accept the Negro in a new image.”3 Sissieretta left a legacy of achievement during her twenty-eight-year career, taking advantage of many opportunities available to her, but she failed to reach her full potential because racial discrimination presented obstacles and limitations she could not overcome. Today’s music lover will never know how Sissieretta’s voice sounded, for she apparently made no recordings, even though the technology was available during the latter part of her career.4 Newspaper accounts from critics of her day describe a beautiful and powerful soprano voice that charmed audiences, both black and white. Sissieretta’s accomplishments might have been lost to time had it not been for a distant relative, Willia Estelle Daughtry, who wrote her doctoral dissertation , “Sissieretta Jones: A Study of the Negro’s Contribution to Nineteenth Century American Concert and Theatrical Life,” about the accomplished soprano and...