SOUTHERN, Eileen (Jackson) 1920-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born February 19, 2002, in Minneapolis, MN; died October 13, 2002, in Port Charlotte, FL. Musicologist, educator, and author. Southern was an authority on African-American and Renaissance music. She received her master's degree in music from the University of Chicago in 1941, after which she taught music at colleges in Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Moving to New York City in 1954, Southern taught at public schools until she received her Ph.D. from New York University in 1961. During the 1960s she was a professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, followed by several years during the early 1970s as an associate professor at York College of the City University of New York. Her final years in academia were spent at Harvard University, where she was professor of music and Afro-American studies from 1976 to 1987 and headed the department of Afro-American studies from 1975 to 1979. Although very interested in Renaissance music, about which she wrote in her doctoral thesis and in The Buxheim Organ Book (1963), the main focus of Southern's research, teaching, and writing was on the contributions African Americans made to the music world. Toward this end, she published numerous works, including The Music of Black Americans: A History (1971; third edition, 1997) and, with Josephine Wright, Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture (1770s-1920s) (2000), and compiled the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians (1982). Southern made a number of breakthroughs in her career. Struggling calmly against racism, she managed to become the first African-American woman to receive tenure at Harvard University, and she founded and edited, along with her husband, the first journal devoted to black music, Black Perspectives in Music, which was published from 1973 to 1990; she also edited the journal Nineteenth-Century African-American Musical Theater. But Southern not only wrote about music, she was a talented musician herself and made several appearances as a concert pianist. For her many achievements in the area of musicology, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of American Music in 2000 and the National Humanities Medal in 2001.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

books

Who's Who among Black Americans, eighth edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Who's Who in the East, 29th edition, Marquis (New Providence, NJ), 2001.

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2002, p. B17.

New York Times, October 19, 2002, p. A15.