Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins.  She was a wealthy heiress, New York socialite, avid patron of the musical arts … and possessed the most excruciatingly unmusical singing voice ever heard on the stage of Carnegie Hall.  I first heard that voice around 1960, coming from the grooves of a 78 rpm record owned by my violin teacher.  By that time, less than twenty years after her death, her story was already laden with legend and myth.

The recordings were played for comedy value.  The picture that emerged of the singer was that of a deluded coloratura wannabe, rich enough to buy her way into a recording studio and ultimately into Carnegie Hall.  But it is perhaps precisely because she was so stupendously awful that interest in her has never waned.  Eight of the nine songs that she recorded in the Melotone Studio, including the one that I heard at my teacher’s home, were released on vinyl in 1962 and later on CD.  Several of those songs are now available on YouTube.

The Sin of Slavery

In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last month, Michelle Obama spoke with poignancy about the fact that she, the descendant of slaves, was now living in a great mansion built by slave labor. “That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters—two beautiful, intelligent, black young women—playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

Her speech was an acknowledgment of where we as a country have been and a recognition of how far we have come.  Sadly, it was met almost immediately by some who objected to any mention of the legacy of slavery, and by others who questioned the truth of her words.  Researchers countered the latter with clear evidence.  The White House and the Capitol building were constructed with both slave and paid labor.  Though records are spotty, and it is not possible to determine precisely what percentage of the work was performed by slaves, there is documentation of 385 payments made to slave owners for “Negro hire” (a euphemism of the day for the rental of slaves) between the years 1795 and 1801 by the commissioners in charge of constructing public buildings in the District of Columbia.