Carnegie Carnegie Corner by Maggie Forbes: A Centennial Worth Celebrating

The Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall takes pride in celebrating milestones that are important to the Library & Music Hall, its community, the country — indeed the world itself.

Readers of the Signal Item and the Library & Music Hall’s newsletter are correct if they think that I love connecting performances and programs to significant anniversaries, while brandishing special terminology such as Quasquicentennial along the way!

The year 2020 marks the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States. On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and final state necessary to ratify the 19th Amendment. After a long fought and hard won battle, states and the federal government were henceforth prohibited from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of gender.

Celebrating this milestone brings me greater personal satisfaction than any ACFL&MH has marked thus far. The centennial is a marker in the journey begun by uncounted brave women long before 1920.

We carry on the work of these brave women today — for our daughters, our granddaughters and still very much for ourselves.

The ACFL&MH has developed a series of wonderful programs that will take place throughout 2020: The Woman’s Hour.

• • •

The Lady Swings kicks off The Woman’s Hour on March 6 in the Music Hall. Vocalist Jessica Lee headlines a concert that pays tribute to Homestead native Maxine Sullivan (1911-1987). Though acknowledged in jazz circles as one of the loveliest voices of the 1930s, Sullivan’s name is not the household word that her talent and lengthy career would suggest. Indeed, she may be best remembered for the influence she had on singers who followed her. Before Sullivan, vocalists tended to “belt.” Sullivan is credited with marrying vocal beauty, diction and timing into a soft swing style that had deep influence on such legendary jazz singers as Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughan.

Diminutive at 4’11” — she shared her stature with Judy Garland and Edith Piaf — Sullivan was known as the “Pint-Sized Songstress.” She was also a beauty who appeared in films with Louis Armstrong, Ronald Reagan and Dorothy Lamour. Sullivan was the only African American performing at a 1938 concert held on the first anniversary of George Gershwin’s death. It was broadcast live and performed before an audience of 20,000 in New York. Sullivan’s rendition of Gershwin’s beloved “Summertime” brought the concert to a standstill when the audience demanded four encores.

In addition to her lustrous decades as a performer — her final performance was less than a month before her death — Maxine Sullivan was a committed activist and educator. In 1975, she transformed a home she owned in the Bronx into “The House that Jazz Built.” It became a venue for local arts groups to perform, hold workshops and teach jazz to neighborhood children.

• • •

Jessica Lee has a habit of getting things started here at the Carnegie Carnegie. She opened our popular Listen Locally Downstairs series in February 2017. When Jessica met with Music Hall Director Melanie Paglia and me last year, she spoke ardently of her admiration for Maxine Sullivan, pushing the sill coalescing The Woman’s Hour series into sharper focus. In Jessica’s words: “I am thrilled to shine a light on the vocal innovation of Maxine Sullivan in such an elegant and historic venue, and to remember her as the musical giant that she truly was!”

That Jessica will perform The Lady Swings with Mark Strickland on guitar, Lou Stellute on saxophone and George Jones on drums promises a gorgeous start to our centennial celebration!

• • •

The Lady Swings is the first of several performances that are part of The Woman’s Hour (a slogan from the suffrage movement). Espy Post Curator Diane Klinefelter has planned special Civil War programming, and the Library is developing a range of programs for all ages. Stay tuned!

Maggie Forbes is the executive director of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall.