Saturday, March 27, 2010

William Dawson

William L. Dawson (’23, Conservatory of Music and Dance), a composer and arranger, earned his degree in music education from the Horner Institute of Fine Arts, which became the UKC Conservatory of Music in 1959. While studying at the Institute, Dawson taught in the Kansas City, Mo., public school district at Lincoln High School with the Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglass. He went on to earn his master’s degree from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, before taking a position at the Tuskegee Institute, where he established the music department in 1931. At Tuskegee, Dawson influenced a number of students’ professional pursuits, including the future novelist Ralph Ellison, the author of Invisible Man.

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