Introduction Early in twentieth century, educators in southern United States recognized that programs in their region did not measure up to standards of those in other areas. They asked leaders of Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC), as National Association for Music Education was then called, to hold a meeting in South so that teachers from region could become active in organization and band together to improve curriculum and instruction. The first convention of MSNC to be held in South took place in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1922, fifteen years after founding meeting in Keokuk, Iowa. At Nashville meeting, 125 southern teachers organized a branch of MSNC, which they named Southern Music Supervisors Conference (SMSC). The purpose of new organization was to study music conditions and problems peculiar to South and encourage a constructive program of development in region. Paul J. Weaver, director of at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was elected president. The first annual SMSC meeting was held same year in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1924 members voted to change organization's name to Southern Conference for Music Education (SCME). (1) Despite increased interest in education in South generated by national meeting in Nashville, and subsequent meetings of new organization in Atlanta (1922), Louisville, Kentucky (1923), Winston-Salem, North Carolina (1924), Birmingham, Alabama (1925), Asheville, North Carolina (1929), Memphis, Tennessee (1931), and again in Atlanta (1933), (2) Charles Faulkner Bryan, for example, writing in early 1940s, called education officials in his home state of Tennessee to task for neglecting education and asked for a concerted effort to remedy situation. He asserted that education would only be accorded its rightful place in curriculum when Tennessee voters, through their elected officials, demanded that instruction in their schools be raised to level of that in the most progressive states. (3) As compared to education in Midwest and Northeast, history of education in South has suffered from a dearth of adequate published information. This situation was caused in part by fact that traditions of informal learning and instruction outside structure of public schools, as well as inadequate funding for teachers and administrative services in public school systems, led to a lack of organized documentation. Music education in southern rural areas was much more likely to take place informally in home and church. Singing schools led by itinerant singing masters, singing conventions, and independent teachers also provided education experiences for children and adults fortunate enough to live near these venues and able to afford them. (4) Unfortunately, it must be acknowledged that poverty accounts for a lack of high educational standards, including those concerning documentation, in southern public schools well into twentieth century, throughout curriculum and especially in and arts. In consideration of these circumstances, collection of documents of both Charles Faulkner Bryan and Anne Grace O'Callahan, two leading educators working in South at time, are valuable. During years of their correspondence, primarily 1945 through 1953, letters were still primary means of personal and professional discourse. Although telephones certainly were in use, they could often be unreliable and nonlocal calls could be costly. The letters are housed in Charles Faulkner Bryan Collection in archives of Volpe Library at Tennessee Tech University (TTU), formerly Tennessee Polytechnic Institute (TPI), in Cookeville, where Bryan served as head of Division of Music from 1935 to 1939. …