page_title: Zenobia Powell Perry
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Zenobia Powell Perry / Biography / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: University of Wyoming, 1949, Zenobia Perry is on left. Courtesy of Zenobia Powell Perry (original description). Martens and Martens (with pair of glasses on the background)
context_page_description: Zenobia Powell Perry was an American composer, professor and civil rights activist. She taught in a number of historically black colleges and universities and composed in a style that writer Jeannie Gayle Pool called "music with clear, classic melodies." Her work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and West Virginia University Band and Orchestra.
context_section_description: Perry was born in what was once a predominantly African American town of Boley, Oklahoma to a physician, Dr. Calvin B. Powell and Birdie Thompson Powell (who had some Creek Indian heritage). Her family was well-educated and middle-class. Her grandfather, who had been a slave, sang her traditional spirituals as a child, which later influenced her work.
  As a child, Perry met Booker T. Washington and sang for him at his appearance in Boley on August 22, 1915, where he "declared she was a future Tuskegegian." Perry took piano lessons as a child with Mayme Jones who had been taught by Robert Nathaniel Dett. She won a piano competition in 1919. Perry also learned to play violin as a child. One of her biggest musical influences, however, came from the experience of hearing Hazel Harrison in concert, after which she knew she wanted to study music.
  In 1925, Perry graduated from Boley High School. Her father was not supportive of her decision to study music, however her mother allowed Perry to pursue music, sending her to Omaha, Nebraska and studying at the Cecil Berryman Conservatory in 1929. After her return to Boley, Dett visited her family to ask them to send her to the Hampton Institute, where she could study with him. However, soon after, Dett left Hampton for the Eastman School of Music and Perry decided on her own to study privately with Dett in Rochester, New York. Perry studied with Dett until May 1932.
  In 1935, she went on to study the Tuskegee Institute, and, because of her family's connection with Washington and a promise from Perry to study education as well as music, she was allowed to attend. At Tuskegee she studied with William L. Dawson who encouraged her to compose original work; she was already preparing arrangements for the Tuskegee Institute Chorus. Perry graduated in 1938.
  After Tuskegee, Perry became part of a black teacher training program which was headed by Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt would become a mentor and friend to Perry and even helped sponsor her graduate studies. In 1941 she took classes at the Colorado State Teachers College and started teaching first grade in 1942. In 1945, she received her Master of Arts degree from Colorado State College.
  She began "earnestly" writing her own music during the 1950s. From 1952 to 1954, Perry worked on her master's degree in music in composition at Wyoming University, where she studied under Allan Arthur Willman, Darius Milhaud and Charles Jones.
caption: Perry with music students and teachers in 1949, including Milhaud and Martens. Perry is on the left.
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