Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

A recently rediscovered portrait, an undated ambrotype of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (see figure 1),1 displays the singer in a fine silk evening dress elaborately trimmed with velvet and lace, and she is adorned with jewelry. Greenfield appears as a woman of means comfortably at ease in this scene, despite the long period of rigid stillness required for this early photographic technology to capture a clear likeness. She sits poised and smiling in a studio designed to mimic a tasteful mid-nineteenth-century domestic scene, and she seems to preside effortlessly over a well-appointed parlor. During Greenfield's lifetime, ambrotypes were rare and expensive. They were produced mostly as private keepsakes for intimate viewing. Like many, this one has the proportions of a pocket-sized book that opens to reveal an image in glass, framed by brass and velvet adornment. Greenfield's portrait is currently associated with a collection that includes the patriarch of the Howard family from Buffalo, New York. This family was among those whose patronage helped facilitate her public debut as a singer in 1851. The ambrotype was probably part of the family's private collection; Greenfield is known to have had lasting personal relationships with them.2 While the image was not likely intended to have a public function originally, it does now. The existence of such an image, and the relative wealth and associated class standing it displays, not only demonstrates Greenfield's association with a monied white family whose patronage helped facilitate her early career, but more importantly, it symbolizes her earned status, fame, and economic success as a nineteenth-century musician. This article interprets Greenfield's mid-to-late career autonomy and influence, providing new documentation of her musical and philanthropic career, which lasted until her death in 1876. In her early career, she necessarily relied on the introductions, patronage, and management provided by white Americans and aristocratic British abolitionists, but her activities from the mid-1850s onward reveal Greenfield's intentional moves to manage her own affairs and shape her legacy.Precious few biographical facts are known about Greenfield, and they are summarized elsewhere,3 but knowledge of her enslaved past, childhood in Philadelphia, and 1851 debut concert tour in the United States and Canada, followed by a tour of the British Isles, has provoked scholars from a range of disciplines to imagine the degree to which Greenfield transgressed racial, gender, and class boundaries and to interpret her status and influence in different communities.4 Juanita Karpf argues that, in the context of the white male-dominated world of nineteenth-century concert touring, Greenfield singing European concert music was “activist feminist discourse.”5 Daphne Brooks hails Greenfield's brave performances as deviant and disruptive of mid-nineteenth-century social norms and expectations, claiming that Greenfield's groundbreaking career inspired subsequent generations of African American performers with her “determined bravery and perseverance to pick and choose her own ‘roles’ in cultural performance.”6 Importantly, Karpf and Brooks have granted Greenfield agency and interpreted her legacy as profound even though biographical knowledge about Greenfield's career has been limited mostly to her first years of touring and reception during the early 1850s. It becomes easier to envision Greenfield as an activist when we have knowledge of her continued concertizing during and after the Civil War, as well as her close association with prominent activists and the philanthropic activities that earned her status in multiple communities, which is the focus of this article.We have generally relied too much on nineteenth-century biographical accounts of Greenfield's life, which discuss only her very early career and uniformly emphasize her white patrons’ role in her success.7 However, scholars interested in Greenfield have also used newspaper reviews and advertisements of her early-career performances to begin to understand how audiences made sense of her racialized and gendered voice and how different communities interpreted her audible presence on concert stages in varied ways. Nina Sun Eidsheim, Alex Black, and Jennifer Lynn Stoever have all used the press coverage of Greenfield's early career to discuss how sonic and visual impressions intersected to create perceptions of racial and gender differences, thereby setting a precedent for the review of later African American singing voices.8 Sara Lampert's nuanced article about the racial politics of Greenfield's reception in the early 1850s discusses the initially mixed reviews she received in the African American press and argues that Greenfield strategically cultivated multiple audiences.9 Kristin Moriah also underscores Greenfield's ability to navigate white and Black cultural spaces and to create communities of Black Canadians and African Americans.10 While some themes from reviews of her debut continued to cycle through the press coverage of her later career, Greenfield experienced heightened fame and status, particularly after her UK tour, which enabled greater autonomy and a more assertive stance against racist discrimination. This article draws together the historical details of Greenfield's mid-to-late career, gleaned from archival sources in Philadelphia as well as digitized nineteenth-century newspapers,11 interpreting her professional work within the parameters of white male management, mainstream white audience assumptions, and Black elite and activist expectations. While the reception of Greenfield's debut in 1851 remains an important frame for her entire career, knowledge of her professional activities throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, including the charity and mentorship work discussed in this article, helps us understand how she negotiated the shifting and contradictory demands of her performances of race, gender, and class as she engaged multiple communities with sometimes conflicting expectations. When we add Greenfield's philanthropic work and collaboration with activists, we can further appreciate the extent to which Greenfield successfully navigated criticism and controversy and operated strategically with a strong sense of social responsibility.Greenfield worked with white male management to establish and maintain a public presence from her debut in 1851 through the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Soon after returning from the UK in 1854, Greenfield rekindled her business relationship with museum manager and professional showman, Colonel James H. Wood, who had managed her debut concert tour through the North and Midwest as well as northeastern Canada. Subsequent tours that Wood managed followed routes similar to her inaugural tour and continued some practices established during the first tour.12 Wood engaged several different pianists as accompanists throughout the tour and occasionally a full orchestra, as in Philadelphia and Trenton.13 Ticket prices continued to cost between fifty cents and a dollar, as they had for the first tour.14 Large audiences filled halls throughout the tour;15 they called for encores (sometimes after every piece),16 and they were sometimes treated to previously unannounced concerts with a change of program on the second or third night at the same location to meet demand for tickets.17 She continued to sing her established repertoire of Italian opera arias, sentimental parlor songs, selections from oratorios, hymns, and ballads from the British Isles.18 The most popular pieces from the first tour, such as “Home Sweet Home” and “When Stars Are in the Quiet Sky,” reappeared on programs during the 1855 tour. Also in keeping with her first tour, newspapers described audience demographics as a way of complimenting Greenfield's ability to attract those presumed to have high standards of musical taste—the fashionable “elite of the city” with many “ladies.”19 As was also the case during the first tour under Wood's management, venues across the United States maintained a variety of race-based seating and admittance policies that discriminated against African Americans.In 1855, Wood advertised newsworthy updates to the “Black Swan” concerts, which provided content for continual press coverage years after her debut. Greenfield's tour of the UK—especially her warm reception by British nobles and command performance for the Queen, as well as the instruction she received from the Queen's music director—provided credentials that had been widely reported in the American press while she was abroad; they also became an essential part of marketing Greenfield's second tour of the United States.20 A broadside for a Hartford, Connecticut concert emphasized that the Black Swan had “lately returned from Europe, where she met with great success.”21 Whereas racialized discourse of her voice as natural, untutored, and lacking cultivation dominated the reception of her inaugural tour, after the January 1855 performances, newspapers frequently reported that she had received the needed instruction and was now exhibiting improvement. For example, the Philadelphia Inquirer printed: “The Black Swan, whose natural abilities as a vocalist are so astonishing, and whose musical education so complete was as we have before intimated, just arrived from Europe, where her success was unprecedented.”22 Another Philadelphia paper wrote of her now “considerably cultivated” voice.23 Referencing the same Philadelphia performance in January 1855, a paper in Trenton, New Jersey, proclaimed: “No one who was present will doubt her ability now, or wonder at her European triumphs.”24 And in Buffalo, New York, where Greenfield's public career started four years previously, a critic who had attended her rehearsal persuaded fellow citizens to purchase tickets to hear Greenfield's “truly remarkable” voice, which “charms the ear of the most refined musical critic.”25 Greenfield's singing had elicited praise for years, but her success in the UK provided newspaper writers with justification to advertise her now cultivated, educated, and refined musical abilities. This story of progress relied on the racist presumption that her formerly enslaved Black voice required the disciplined training provided by the British elite and permitted a role for white Americans to function as patrons sharing credit for her continued success. Nonetheless, more widespread acknowledgment of her musical achievements would translate into status that enabled greater autonomy.Besides advertising the credentials Greenfield had earned in England, the addition of Thomas J. Bowers—an African American tenor from Philadelphia—to the programs also drew new attention to Greenfield's touring from 1855 onward. In keeping with Wood's style of managing Greenfield as an exotic with a racialized form of established European singers’ names,26 Bowers was variously advertised as the “Indian Mario,” “African Mario,” and eventually just “Mario,” after the Italian opera tenor Giovanni Mario, who was performing in the United States during this period.27 Touring with Bowers was also a public demonstration of Greenfield's ties to prominent African American families in Philadelphia who enjoyed rich musical lives and musical education, as well as her mentorship of younger and less-experienced musicians from this community. Singer Sarah Sedgwick, Thomas Bowers's sister, later joined Greenfield in concert and sometimes appeared along with student Mary Brown (“American Nightingale”), Thomas Bowers, and Greenfield on the same programs.28 Mary Brown was from a musical family of Black Philadelphians and the niece of Francis Johnson, a famous bandleader in that city.29 As individuals, Thomas Bowers and Mary Brown were not yet well known nationally when they joined Greenfield. Greenfield provided them valuable professional development and lent her more famous name to help them gain recognition. Greenfield's collaborative work with lesser-known Black musicians is evidence of her interest in mentorship and charity, even when the performances were all publicly framed by Wood's exoticized marketing. From the winter of 1858 through the onset of the Civil War, Greenfield continued performing in the northeastern United States and Canada with a variety of musicians, including many more African American collaborators than had been involved in Wood's tours.In keeping with Wood's avoidance of abolition politics, Greenfield mostly eschewed music that explicitly mentioned slavery when singing to a public audience until the Civil War. Her performance of Charles W. Glover's “I Am Free” as a stunt piece demonstrating her wide vocal range was a notable exception. Remarkably, performing this song required Greenfield to sing the roles of both an escaping slave and slave owner, but since it dramatized slavery without directly taking a stance for or against it, the performance capitalized on the rising interest in slavery and sensational potential of escape stories without alienating potential audiences. For the 1863 tour, in the midst of the Civil War, Greenfield added the first known obviously political repertoire of her public career. She sang Himmel's “Battle Prayer for the President's Grand Army” in her lower register, which “excited usual admiration,” according to one reviewer.30 The same year, she also sang “Come Rally Round Our Flag My Boys,” which, when programed with “I Know My Redeemer Liveth,” led one reviewer to praise the combination of “religion and patriotism.”31 With abolition politics nationalized and folded into the Union cause at this point, these program additions could have been understood as patriotic numbers that transcended the slavery question; they were not particularly controversial in the North, where audiences would have expected touring singers to present patriotic and religious music that helped people process the ideals that motivated the fighting as well as the human cost of ongoing battles.While Greenfield's repertoire of popular ballads, arias, and hymns could appear mostly apolitical during her first years of public life, abolition politics shaped her tours in the mid- and late 1850s just as they did in the decade's early years. After American press coverage of Greenfield's association with Harriett Beecher Stowe and British abolitionists, there was even more extensive discussion of anti-slavery politics and related social causes in the context of concert reviews. Newspapers in slave states continued to deny Greenfield's success or distort reports of her concertizing into pro-slavery propaganda, as they had done during her first tour. Mostly, these statements were brief and mocking in tone. They employed the overtly racist language pervasive in mid-nineteenth century discourse and contradicted most newspaper reporting about audience reaction and size. For example, in Tennessee, the Fayetteville Observer reported her association with Stowe and other abolitionists as a way to dismiss her, calling her a “bouncing fat negro wench” who “failed to produce a sensation” in England and drew only a “very thin” crowd in Philadelphia.32 A paper in Wilmington, North Carolina inhumanly referred to her as “wool and tallow,” and in Charleston, South Carolina, where her tours had been regularly reported, a reporter wrote during the 1855 tour that she was “black as the ace of spades and ugly as the knave . . . a curiosity she will ‘draw’ for one night.”33 Much of this grotesque racism, wordplay, mockery, and inversion of her earned success resembled the caricatures common to blackface minstrelsy. Unsurprisingly, at this time of wider recognition of her new status as an artist, minstrel troupes joined the backlash against successful public African Americans and started crafting blackface parodies of the “Black Swan.”34The nationwide mainstream press, along with abolitionist and African American newspapers continued to interpret Greenfield's success in light of abolition and related social causes. The mainstream press frequently credited Greenfield's singing voice as especially influential in causing listeners to “overcome all prejudices.”35 After announcing her concert, a New York writer proclaimed that “surely the prejudices of color are wearing away.”36 Greenfield was widely held up as an example of an “uplifted” formerly enslaved African American. For example, in 1855, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that Greenfield “has been useful at showing the world what astonishing musical capabilities and powers of voice lie buried in the slavery of her race.”37 Thomas Bowers sent a lengthy article from a Pennsylvania paper that praised Greenfield as an “extraordinary artiste” to Frederick Douglass's Paper, which reprinted it, along with Bowers's interpretation of the review. “I think it is calculated to advance our cause both with friends and foes: it gives encouragement and comfort to us who are downtrodden and oppressed in this, the land of our birth, to press onward in pursuit of knowledge, and the acquisition of Arts and Sciences.”38 When the president of the National Council of Colored People, Dr. J. McCune Smith, presented his argument for establishing a school for African Americans that would teach more than technical trades, he cited Greenfield's accomplishments as an example of what African Americans must do to earn equality. Both The Liberator and Frederick Douglass's Paper printed his words: “The colored man must do impracticable things before he is admitted to a place in society. He must speak like a Douglass, write like a Dumas, and sing like the Black Swan before he could be recognized as a human being.”39 Categorizing Greenfield alongside Frederick Douglass and Alexandre Dumas as an exemplary Black achiever attests to the respect she commanded and her importance among Black intellectuals and activists. At social events where African American audience members had meaningful roles to play, Greenfield's concerts provided opportunities to demonstrate their rising position in society. For example, referencing a concert at the Broadway Tabernacle in spring of 1855, Frederick Douglass's Paper printed: “The audience was composed of the elite of both classes; and our ladies vied with their fairer neighbors if not in richness of attire, at least in neatness of apparel, correctness of deportment and personal attractions.”40 In 1859, the Anti-Slavery Bugle described an audience of about 450 “colored” and 350 “white” sitting “promiscuously together” as evidence of progress toward racial equity. The writer was as interested in audience behavior as in Greenfield's singing: “The countenances and appearances of many of the colored people showed them to be intelligent and refined; and judging from the ease and gentility with which they moved among their white friends, prejudice against color is melting away before the improved developments of the people of color in Philadelphia.”41 Press coverage of respectful audience behavior regularly reflected back on Greenfield, as she was credited with inspiring white Americans to reject racial prejudice. Even when not overtly political, Greenfield's performances contributed to political discourse and advocacy for egalitarianism.42Across the country, newspapers took a special interest in interpreting what Greenfield's concerts in Baltimore, Maryland—her first publicized concerts in a slave state—meant for progress toward racial equity and abolition. For example, a paper in Sandusky, Ohio framed the news of Greenfield's concerts in Baltimore entirely in terms of racial politics: “It was her first appearance in a Slave State and excited much curiosity among Northerners to know how the negress ‘star’ would be welcomed.” Greenfield was apparently encored after every song, leading the Sandusky writer to proclaim her singing to be a triumphant appeal to whites to end the practice of selling “such women as Miss Greenfield . . . like cattle and horses.”43 William Still, of the Underground Railroad fame, wrote to the Provincial Freeman, recounting news of Greenfield's successful Baltimore performances as an important milestone, emphasizing the “respectful attitude” shown to Greenfield at the performance and in the days following, when “gentlemen and ladies conquered their prejudices and made calls upon her.” Noting also the positive reception of Greenfield's concerts in this writer's home city of Philadelphia, he interpreted her success as “reason for encouragement” for those African Americans who were on paths toward “improvement of intellect.”44 The Weekly Wisconsin reported the news of her Baltimore concerts as simply the “triumph over prejudice of color.”45 Greenfield's concerts were important cultural events, interpreted not only as musical performances but occasions that provided evidence of social change. She was credited when progress toward racial equality was assessed, but so were white audience members who displayed their racial tolerance by applauding her singing and Blacks who with dress and behavior appeared “respectable.”During the Civil War, the mainstream press nationalized its acknowledgment of Greenfield's success and asserted her triumph over racist prejudice. Strong evidence is provided by this newspaper writer in Wisconsin who had not even attended a concert but nonetheless proclaimed: We have never heard her; yet we heard of her years ago, when it was a question whether with all her gifts, she could melt down the mountain of prejudice, and take her place among the acknowledged artists in the musical world. In short, whether she could wring “success” out of the difficulties . . . She has done it.46After her spring 1863 concert in Madison, Wisconsin, the papers published effusive praise: Her ability as a singer, the extraordinary compass of her voice and the natural magnificence of some of its tones completely closed our mind to everything but the skill and beauty with which every song was rendered and some of them preeminently so. This artist emphatically evidences the regality of genius and ability, which overcomes all disadvantages of position or person and triumphs overall difficulties.47Newspapers in the Midwest carried the story of her continual advancement longer than the papers on the East Coast, where she performed more often. In Illinois, during the 1863 tour, a paper assured audiences: “We heard this celebrity some years ago, when she had had much less experience than now, and we can assure our citizens that her reputation is not a bogus one. . . Nature did wonders for her and with careful cultivation . . . she is undoubtedly one of the finest singers of the age.”48 In Keokuk, Iowa, the newspaper proclaimed her “success and triumph against the greatest disadvantages under which a candidate for public favor ever appeared before a popular audience,” while expressing embarrassment that the venue, a “detestable hall with its dirt and dust and gas-choking atmosphere, and the sound escaping into space,” was not appropriate for a singer of her high caliber; it promised to find a more suitable venue for her second concert in that small city.49 These passages represent the dominant tone of the reviews throughout Greenfield's 1863 tour of the North, when acknowledgement of her celebrity and praise for her singing could be tied directly to support for the Union.By the 1860s, most of the overt ridicule happened on the minstrel stage rather than in the context of newspaper reviews of her singing, but occasionally papers slipped into blackface-style parody again, even when otherwise praising her singing. For example, the Wisconsin State Journal reviewed her concert in Madison in 1863 as “excellent,” adding that it was remarkable to hear the finest music of European composers exquisitely “rendered by a woman who in form and general appearance might have been taken for an obese black cook, dressed in opera costume.”50 Also in 1863, an Iowa paper described her appearance as “non-attractive” in grotesque detail before declaring a feeling of “delight, astonishment, and admiration” for her singing. This writer concluded: “In a word, she must be heard to be appreciated.”51 Yet another reviewer during this tour told readers that Greenfield's first appearance on stage evokes an “unfavorable impression” but is followed by her first note, which “enchants all.”52 Papers in the South replicated this pattern of separating body from voice to simultaneously deliver insults and praise. For example, in Memphis, a writer described her appearance as “repulsive” and her singing as “divine.”53 Paradoxically, these writers employed especially degrading descriptions of her physical appearance in order to explain their astonishment over her unbelievable voice. The visual and aural disconnect experienced by audiences had been a theme of reviews during Greenfield's first tour, and here, more than a decade later, it still represented the vicious racism she faced, even among those who admired her musicianship. It is probably not a coincidence that these examples all came from the 1863 tour that Wood managed. He likely played up the surprise, intrigue, and exoticism still at work because her African American identity and former enslavement could still be viewed as incompatible with her artistry and accomplishments.During Greenfield's inaugural tour across the North, which Wood managed, African American leaders had been hesitant to fully embrace her as an exemplary member of their community. Wood's trafficking in racist stereotypes was likely a factor, but we have clear evidence of persistent controversy over a variety of discriminatory seating and admittance policies that barred African American from attending her concerts or relegated Blacks to a separate and less desirable seating area, such as a balcony. J. R. Johnson, writing for Frederick Douglass's Paper about Greenfield's October 1851 debut in Buffalo, New York, explained: The censure which we feel constrained to pass on the conduct of Miss Greenfield, may be in some degree modified by the reflection, that she, as other human beings, has found it exceedingly difficult to entirely escape the contamination of pro-slavery philosophy . . . 54Johnson acknowledged the criticism the singer received and attempted to sympathize with her. The same issue of Douglass's paper also reported advice from Black ministers, here beginning with a hypothetical that imagines an assertive stance against discrimination Greenfield might have taken with the Buffalo-based patron who was then facilitating her debut: If the Black Swan had said to Mr. H. E. Howard “I will not consent to such an insulting proposal as that of seating the colored people by themselves; I love that people too well; and love the human race too well, to lend my influence to sanction such a deed of darkness,” she would have done more for destroying wicked caste, and undoing the heavy burdens, than any Congress orator, thought ever so faithful, can do for a series of years. Will Miss Greenfield think of these suggestions? They are made in kindness. They may do her good.55Initially, this criticism focused on the policies, white patronage, and management that discriminated against African Americans who wanted to attend the concerts. Most writers stopped short of blaming Greenfield directly and offered plenty of advice.Some African American leaders acknowledged the severe power imbalance between Greenfield and her white management. Taking up the subject of Greenfield's concert in Salem, Massachusetts in early March 1852 when he tried to pay to her a visit, activist William Cooper Nell wrote to Frederick Douglass: I called at her hotel, and sent up my card. The servant returned with the answer that “the swan begged to be excused, that she didn't see nobody.” She is evidently under the complete control of that swell, Col. Wood. I expect she sees none without his permission. No friend accompanies her to look out for her interest. Even the person acting as her waiting maid, is a white woman of Wood's selection. She must be utterly destitute of self-respect to submit to such terms. I called upon her merely as a matter of duty, in return for attentions received from her when I was in Philadelphia.56Besides the sympathetic tone shaping Nell's writing, the end of this passage contains an important reference to Greenfield's prior communication with him—evidence that from her home city of Philadelphia, she had connected with important Black leaders who lived elsewhere in New England, and that the circumstances and management of her first tour had temporarily severed those ties. Additional evidence that William Cooper Nell blamed Wood, and not Greenfield, for the race-based discrimination at her concerts appeared in his 1852 letter to Amy Kirby Post. Referencing a forthcoming concert in Lockport, New York, Nell wrote “I hope Colonel Wood will not challenge me.”57 Recounting the details of eleven African Americans who had purchased tickets for a concert in Cincinnati but were refused entry, John L. Gaines wrote in the Voice of the Fugitive: “We desire to draw Miss Greenfield's attention to it, for we cannot make ourselves believe that she will travel as a cantatrice with a man who will use her to insult her race.”58 Gaines, like some of the other African American leaders, pointed to Wood as the responsible party but urged Greenfield to stand up to him and the racist policies. Johnson, Nell, Gaines, and Douglass himself shared a deep desire to witness and take part in Greenfield's unfolding public success but understandably could not tolerate the discriminatory concert admittance policies.Leading African American intellectuals wanted to claim her as a representative of their race and elite class but grew impatient with the overtly racist policies that diminished her concerts’ representation of social progress. The A