[NFBV-Announce] Black History Month

Thu Feb 25 18:24:16 UTC 2021

Hey NFB Family and Friends,

Please read and enjoy day 25 of Black History Month.

I want to tell you about a blind, black businesswoman rarely remembered
outside of Indiana. Her name is Mary Fitzhugh. 

Mary was born about 1880 in Missouri. At the age of 15, she became blind
through an unknown accident. Some records indicate she was educated at a
mission school in her youth. In 1898, she became a student at the Missouri
Institution for the Education of the Blind where she excelled at music, yet
because she was black, there is no mention of her color until an annual
report of the school in 1928, long after her departure and her success in
the world. 

As she entered the school at the age that children were almost completed
with their education, she did not graduate with a class. Papers indicate she
received an Honorary certificate of graduation about 1910. 

She learned to read and write in Braille and this included braille music
notation. The Missouri school had a braille printing capacity since the
early 1860’s brailling music and literary material for the students.
Missouri was one of the first schools for the blind to adopt Braille as its
primary reading system for its students. Other skills she learned included
homemaking, sewing, knitting and typing.

During her first several years at the school, most of the students were
confined to the large four-story building.  St. Louis had grown considerably
as a town since the school was built. The railroad tracks ran right by the
school and the depot was close. The noise from the trains made it almost
impossible for teachers to be heard as the trains roared past. Strangers
disembarked from trains regularly and the staff became concerned that the
students would be taken advantage of by strangers and the seedy element that
had moved into the area and to ensure the safety of the students, limited
their activities outside the building. 

In 1906, the Missouri Institution for the Education of the Blind moved to a
new site. The building was new. Mary and other students were crammed into
dorm rooms. Pianos for the tuning department were placed into dorm rooms
crowding the living quarters even more. 

Mary left the school in 1910 and rented a room from Alice Mellroy, black
herself, who ran a small rooming house taking in “colored” boarders, on
Gratiot Street in St. Louis. In the summer of 1910, she debuted as a singer
in Philadelphia at the Musical Fund Hall to a packed audience.  Soon she
became the protégé of Madame Emma Azalia Hackley, the black singer promoter
of racial pride through music.

Azalia was an accomplished musician and schoolteacher. She lived in Denver
for a while and had many connections in the music, black and religious
communities that she called upon to help launch Mary’s career. The two of
them traveled to almost every state and Canada where Mary would perform her
music and recitations of poetry and excerpts from classical literature. Both
were light skinned Black women. Some accused Azalia of pretending to be
white, yet all evidence leads to her using what ever she could to reach the
broadest audience, highlighting the skills, talents and culture of the black
entertainers she taught and promoted.  This was the philosophy and tradition
Mary adopted several years later, when she opened her music college. 

In Mary’s promotional material, she included news clippings reviewing her
previous performances along with long letters of reference from many church
leaders, including her home church in St. Louis where she had been an active
member for many years. A short letter of recommendation also came from the
principal of the school for the blind  

She moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1916 or 1917 and took a room at 1436
Martindale. John, her future husband also lived at that address

She married John William Valentine a man who worked as a porter for the
Sanitary Cake Co., then went into business on his own and later worked in a
printing office.

She officially opened the Fitzhugh Valentine College of Music at 1735
Boulevard Place. In August of 1919. It was the first music school for
“colored” people in the state of Indiana. Not only did she teach music
theory, elocution and piano, but handled all the administration work for the
first year or so. The school quickly grew. Mary hired several black
teachers. The school inspired several choral groups that represented the
College around Indianapolis and the state especially during religious
holidays. The school participated in the Chautauqua Programs that came to
Indianapolis as late as 1928. 

The Chautauqua movement was a traveling tent show of sorts that promoted
adult education. When the Chautauqua circuit came to town in the first three
decades of the 20th century, , it provided an opportunity for many who could
not afford to attend a high school or college an opportunity to become
better informed or further their education. 

Graduations and school concerts were held at the black Baptist Churches in
the area as the school itself did not have an auditorium. 

Mary served as a role model for other black blind children such as Dorothy
Jones and Charles Amos. In 1922 Dorothy and her mother lived in the same
building as the Fitzhugh-Valentine College. Dorothy was a student at the
Indiana School for the Blind. Charles Amos was an early pupil who later
became a leader in music circles in Indianapolis, teaching music privately.
He was active in the school for years, performing and assisting with the
publicity.  

Although there were apartments in their office building, John and Mary lived
in several locations around the school. They lived at 530 Douglas Street.
After John’s death, she moved to 2146 Boulevard Place where she lived for
the rest of her life. This was a mixed-race, middle-class neighborhood that
no longer existed. 

Mary was widowed in 1931 yet kept on with her college. She continued to
teach at the school as well as the administrative duties. She no longer
traveled out of the Indianapolis area to perform. In 1944, the College
launched a fundraiser to purchase their own building as the school had
outgrown the space. Mary died in July of 1945, not able to see the final new
buildings.  A small collection of her records can be found at the Indiana
Historical Society in Indianapolis. 

Submitted by Uricka Harrison

Peace,

Jacki Bruce

Corresponding Secretary, National Federation of the Blind of Virginia
 <mailto:jackibruce6 at gmail.com> mailto:jackibruce6 at gmail.com
 <tel:(757)291-1789> tel:(757)291-1789
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 <http://www.nfbv.org/> www.nfbv.org

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Live the life you want.

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together to help blind people live the lives they want

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