In 1908, Robert Nathaniel Dett became the first African American to gain a bachelor of music degree at Oberlin College in Ohio. The Canadian-born Dett later studied at Harvard and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and he went on to become one of America’s most respected teachers, composers and conductors. In 1930, his choir performed for President Herbert Hoover on the White House lawn, and made a tour of Europe that included several concerts in London. In 1937, the premiere in Cincinnati of his “sacred cantata” The Ordering of Moses was broadcast nationwide by NBC, though the transmission was halted halfway through, supposedly because of “technical difficulties”; the real reasons have never satisfactorily been established.
