The Colorado statesman., 1912-04-20
COLORED MAN GUIDED
GREAT VIOLINIST To FAME
DAVID NAMES, FAMOUS PLAYER.
TELLS NEW YORK AUDIENCE
OF DEBT HE OWES TO CHARLES
DOUGLAS, A COLORED MAN,
WHO TAUGHT AND DIRECTED
HIM AS A POOR BOY TRYING
TO PLAY THE VIOLIN.
(New York Evening Mail.)

| iI>tW OTh ENeuluB mdll.J
New York and the Colored Peo-
ple," was the subject of discussion at
the March conference on the evils Of
pauperism, held in the Charities
building. The conference was made
particularly interesting from the fact
that David Names, director of the
New York music school settlement,
told the story of his first musical in
struction and the debt he owed to his
negro teacher.
This debt, said Mr.. Names, who is
the brother-in-law of Walter Dam
rosch, he had attempted to repay by
founding the Musical School Settle
ment for Negroes, which, in its first
season has $50 pupils.
How He Met Douglas.
He was very poor boy, whose
first handling of the violin had been
guided only by an itinerant music
teacher. 1t was then that he met
Charles Douglas, and the story he
told was the story of Charles Doug
las.
Douglas was a Negro lad in south
ern town when he first attracted at
tention as one possessed Of conspicu-
Gus musical talent. So great was the
promise he showed with the violin
that rich patrons backed up his ambi-
tions and sent him abroad to study
under the masters there, and as he
became a violinist of power he be-
came, too, a man of wide reading and
a fluent speaker of French and Ger
man as well as of English.
l. 1T t,,1,, ha
came back to America, hoping to find
a bright future in the music world
of the north. But this hope was never
realized, for, though there was recog-
milton of his ability among people
who knew. the color line was drawn
to shut him out of fair opportunities.
There was no room for him in
great symphony orchestra. There
seemed to be no place for him to pur-
sue his career on the level for which
his taste and his education had pre-
pared him. And, gifted and accom-
plished though he was, he had to turn
] to the guitar and the banjo as the in
struments with which a negro could
gain a hearing
Heart Broken, He Died.
said Mr. Names, "he died of brok-
en- heart"
One day, a broken and a disap-
pointed man, Douglas was walking
along 9th street, when he heard the
strains of a violin rising from the
basement of one of the old brown
stone houses there.
at is my son who is playing" was
the proud reply of the woman there
to the question that Douglas stopped
to ask, and, going in, he found boy
of 10 or thereabouts. fiddling away for
dear life.
you do not play badly" the negro
said, little wistfully, as Mr.. Names
remembers it, for he was the boy
with the violin
And out of that meeting grew
friendship between the boy and the
disappointed Negro, who taught him
the things he had learned abroad, and
who read to him from Poe and Tenny
son, and helped to shape his life.
Mr.. Names afterward studied under
the masters in Europe, but 1t was the
colored man playing the banjo for
living in New York who first started
him in the right direction
Thae was thirty years ago, but 1t is
to the memory of Douglas that Mr..
Names has dedicated the Musical
School Settlement for Negroes that Is
In progress in the quarters Of the
Mary F. Walton Free Kindergarten,
on West 63rd street, and in the par
fish house of st. Philips. on 103rd
street.