Ruth W. Greenfield

Ruth Wolkowsky Greenfield (born November 17, 1923[1]) is an American concert pianist and teacher who, through music, broke racial barriers and brought together black and white students, taught by black and white teachers. This pioneering color-blind approach was considered scandalous at the time, but was a breath of fresh air in the then-segregated society.[2]

Ruth W. Greenfield
Greenfield in 2018
Background information

Biography

Born in 1923 as Ruth Miriam Wolkowsky in Key West, Florida. At age six months she moved to Miami and was raised there. While growing up, she was unaware of the pervasive segregation of the time, except when visiting her grandparents in Spring Garden. Across the railroad tracks from there was the neighborhood then called Colored Town, and now called Overtown.[3] This town seemed like a strange other world, in which black people had a servile role, doing laundry for white people.

She began studying piano at age 5, and later studied with Mana-Zucca,[4] who moved from New York to Miami. Greenfield graduated from Miami Beach High School in 1941, then studied for two years at the University of Miami, then obtained her bachelor's and master's degrees in music at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While studying with the renowned pianist Artur Schnabel, she broke more racial taboos by dating a classmate who was a young black man from Jamaica. She returned to the University of Miami again to teach piano.

She later left Miami for Paris, France, in 1949, in order to study composition with Nadia Boulanger, the teacher of successful composers including Aaron Copland and Astor Piazzolla. Paris of that time was refreshingly integrated, with integration considered as the norm. In Paris, she married Miami attorney Arnold Merwin Greenfield, a graduate of Harvard Law School. He enjoyed painting and cooking and listening to his wife play the piano. Her maid of honor at the small Paris wedding was a black pianist Lois Towles from Arkansas.

Upon returning to segregated Miami, Greenfield wanted to do something about the situation. She founded, in 1951, the Fine Arts Conservatory, one of the first fully integrated schools for music, art and dance in the South.[5][6][7] Greenfield was motivated by her friendship with school principal Mary Ford Williams, whose son, James "Jimmy" Ford, a Juilliard School graduate, had found doors to Miami's music establishment and competitions closed to him. During the early years, the school moved between black and white neighborhoods, holding classes in such locations as private homes, a Masonic lodge, a YMCA and the most notorious location, a storage room for caskets that reeked of formaldehyde, in an Overtown funeral home. On May 9, 1953, Ruth's Fine Arts Conservatory student, 15-year-old James Ford performed at an otherwise all-white recital at Miami Memorial Library thanks to Ruth's having alerted Jack Bell, a Miami Herald columnist who wrote about the issue.[8]

By 1961, the conservatory had raised enough money to buy a small run-down house in the vicinity of N.W. 60th Street and 7th Avenue that served as its permanent headquarters, until it closed in 1978. The Fine Arts Conservatory eventually expanded to six branches throughout Dade County. Prominent community leaders, including Mary Ford Williams, Congresswoman Carrie Meek and Dorothy Graham, continued to steer talented students to the school.

Ruth Greenfield also continued to teach for 32 years at what is today Miami Dade College, Florida's first integrated college.[9] She founded Miami-Dade Community College's Lunchtime Lively Arts Series in the late 1970s and made it all-encompassing (including music, theater, and literature).[8] The wide-ranging list of artists who performed include Isaac Bashevis Singer, Dick Gregory, Odetta, The Ink Spots, Virgil Thomson and Gwendolyn Brooks. In the fall of 2011, the college rededicated its Wolfson Campus auditorium in Ruth Greenfield's honor.[2]

Greenfield's family has also been influential in the arts. Her children include New York City photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Miami cultural critic, Charles D. Greenfield, published clinical social worker, Alice Greenfield and golfer, Frank Greenfield. Key West preservationist David Wolkowsky is her brother. Her grandchildren include filmmaker, Liliana Greenfield-Sanders and painter Isca Greenfield-Sanders.[10]

In 2013, director Steve Waxman released a feature documentary, "Instruments of Change" about Greenfield and her history with the Fine Arts Conservatory. The film included Miami personalities Eduardo Padron, Marvis Martin, Garth Reeves, Carrie Meek, Judge Wendell Graham, Judy Drucker and Charles Austin.

References
  1. Greenfield, Ruth W. "United States Public Records, 1970-2009". FamilySearch. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  2. "In 1950s Miami, music bridged the racial divide". Miami Herald. 14 April 2012. Retrieved 19 April 2012.
  3. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cjw0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=j-sFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1876%2C70713
  4. "Mana-Zucca". www.amica.org. Retrieved 2015-12-28.
  5. "How two friends started Florida's first interracial arts school". Retrieved 19 April 2012.
  6. "Tally Brown, 64, Dies; Singer and an Actress". The New York Times. 9 May 1989.
  7. "Miami: Ruth Greenfield". Mapping Arts Project. Retrieved 2015-12-28.
  8. "Jewish Museum of Florida".
  9. "About MDC - Miami Dade College". www.mdc.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-28.
  10. "Movers & Shakers: Isca Greenfield-Sanders". Veronica Beard. Archived from the original on 2016-01-06. Retrieved 2015-12-28.
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