My Notes
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Wikipedia:
Roberta Dodd Crawford (5 August 1897 Р14 June 1954) was an African-American lyric soprano and voice instructor who performed throughout the United States and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Roberta was born in Bonham, Texas before studying singing in Nashville, Chicago, and Paris. While in Paris, she married Prince Kojo Tovalou Hou̩nou of Dahomey. When Hou̩nou died in a French prison, Roberta was left without access to their marriage funds and returned to Paris where she lived through the Nazi occupation from 1940 until 1944. After the war, she returned to Texas where she died in 1954 in Dallas
Roberta Dodd Crawford was born on 5 August 1897 in the Tank Town section of Bonham, Texas. She was one of eight children of Joe and Emma Dodd (née Dunlap). She was active in the church choir and any other musical opportunities in Bonham while growing up. She worked at the Curtis Boarding House in town in 1914 and would often perform regular songs for customers. Because of her singing talents, five white women in the community paid for her to attend Wiley College until she transferred to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and then in 1920 to the Chicago College of Performing Arts. She studied with many prominent singers and vocal coaches at these institutions including Roland Hayes and vocal coach Hattie Van Buren. While studying in Chicago, she married William B. Crawford, a captain in the U.S. Army.
Musical career and marriages
Her first major performance was on 15 April 1926 at Kimball Hall in Chicago where she sang pieces in five different languages and included songs by African American composers, like N. Clark Smith. She was one of the few opera singers who would sing in Spanish at the time. She followed this performance with a number of shows throughout Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, and Texas (including a concert in Bonham). At some point in the late-1920s, her relationship with William B Crawford ended; sources disagree, with some claiming that Roberta was widowed and others that she divorced.
After a number of concerts, she moved to Paris in 1928 to study with mezzo-soprano Blanche Marchesi. While in Paris in 1931, she met and began a relationship with Kojo Tovalou Houénou, a prominent African lawyer and writer who was related to the royal family of the kingdom of Dahomey (in present-day Benin). Crawford and Houénou married on 6 March 1932 in Paris and lived in the city for the early years of the marriage. The couple were very connected to the African and African-American communities in Paris during the 1930s and were active in the arts and cultural scenes. During this period, she went by the name Princess Tovalou Houénou and continued to perform in Paris. However, much of the later years were spent outside of Paris, in Dahomey, Senegal and other parts of West Africa as Houénou was continually harassed and arrested by French authorities for his political involvement. He died on 13 July 1936 while in a French prison.
World War II and death
After Houénou's death, Crawford was unable to gain access to their shared property, which included her concert earnings, because they were all impounded by the French colonial authorities. She returned to Paris, lived with friends, and worked for the National library of Paris in the late 1930s. However, having little money, meant that she was unable to escape Paris when Nazi Germany took over the city at the beginning of World War II. As an African-American, her work and freedom were severely constrained, including periods under house arrest, in internment camps, and the inability to get work permits. Although she was a prisoner for a period during this time, there are conflicting reports regarding whether she was ever held in a concentration camp. When Allied troops entered Paris, she resumed singing and worked for the Red Cross entertaining troops. However, anemia and malnutrition prevented her from regular work and she returned to Texas sometime around 1950.
She died on 14 June 1954 of a heart attack in Dallas and is buried, in an unmarked grave, in Gates Hill Cemetery in Bonham.
Bio taken from: Texas State Historical Society
CRAWFORD, ROBERTA DODD (1895–1954). Roberta Dodd Crawford, black lyric soprano, also known as Princess Kojo Tovalou-Houenou, was born in 1895 in the black Tank Town section of Bonham, Texas, the oldest daughter among eight children born to Joe and Emma (Dunlap) Dodd. As a child she attended Washington School and later worked as a waitress at Curtis Boarding House. Her singing talent brought her to the attention of several Bonham women who arranged for her to perform at the Alexander Hotel and at several Bonham churches. With help from benefactors, she attended Wiley College at Marshall for two years, then entered Fisk University, where she studied with Roland Hayes. About 1920 she entered the Chicago Musical College (now Roosevelt University), where for the next six years she studied with Madame Herman Devries, a noted voice coach. While in Chicago Roberta Dodd married Capt. William B. Crawford of the Eighth Illinois Regiment.
On April 15, 1926, she debuted at Kimball Hall and was accompanied by pianist Cleo Dickerson Holloway. Her performance received favorable reviews from the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender. She sang art songs and arias in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English, as well as a Negro spiritual; the inclusion of the latter followed the practice of her mentor Hayes and other African-American recital singers of that era. Her program included works by Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Puccini. She also sang an aria from the opera L'Africaine by Meyerbeer and the arietta waltz from Mireille, a Gounod opera. Four sponsors and seventy-four society patrons supported her Kimball Hall debut.
In a review of another 1926 performance by Crawford, the Defender's Maude Roberts George described a program of fifteen songs in English, Spanish, French, and German. Classical singers rarely included Spanish-language songs in their repertory at the time, and George reported that Crawford learned the language from a Spanish operatic singer living "on the Arizona border." Her German-language program included selections from Bach, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. The recital also included a song by Maj. N. Clark Smith, an African-American composer.
In the months before Crawford's Kimball Hall debut, Roland Hayes battled Jim Crow laws before his own concert appearances in Atlanta and Baltimore by refusing to go on stage unless theater managers ceased the practice of refusing blacks access to privileged seats in the house. In 1926 Crawford performed in cities outside of Chicago, including Rockford, Illinois; Indianapolis, before the National Association of Negro Musicians; and St. Paul. On December 11 she embarked on a pre-Christmas tour of cities in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, along with accompanist Hortense Hall.
In 1928 she performed at the First United Methodist Church in Bonham, where her program combined Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English art songs and operatic arias with Negro spirituals and at least one "primitive African melody." Later she traveled to France to become a student of Blanche Marchesi in Paris. In 1931 she made her French debut by singing selections in five languages at the Salle Gaveau. Now widowed, she met Kojo Marc Tovalou-Houenou (or Marc Tovalou Quenum), a doctor and lawyer and Pan-African activist from Porto Novo, the capital of Dahomey in French West Africa (now Benin). Some sources also refer to him as a prince. They married in 1932 in Paris's Sixth Arrondissement; he died about 1938.
After his death, his widow returned to Paris. She was never able to secure funds from her African property.
During World War II she joined the Red Cross and sang in churches and canteens for American soldiers. From 1943 until 1945 she worked part-time in the National Library of Paris. She also gave voice lessons and sang professionally. During this time she was known in Paris as Princess Tovalou-Houenou. Suffering from anemia, she relied on friends for financial help and credited a Fort Worth physician with saving her life by getting surplus food coupons for her. She reportedly spent time in a concentration camp during the German occupation of France, but was released. In 1948 she returned to Bonham, but her poor physical and emotional health left her unwilling to perform again. She moved to Dallas a few years later to seek medical care.
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