Western University at Quindaro, Kansas (1865-1943) and Its Legacy of Pioneering Musical Women

Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, the first major white school to admit black students, opened its doors in 1865.2 Its first black woman graduate was Harriet Gibbs Marshall, who founded the Washington (D.C.) Conservatory of Music in 1903. Western University, despite its history as a state-run normal school, then a theological seminary under the wing of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and a state-run industrial training institution inspired by Booker T. Washington's doctrine of Negro self-help, remained little known until a certain Robert G. Jackson arrived to spearhead its music department in 1903.3 In no time at all, a rigorous training program was developed and a music building added to its campus.