Florence Beatrice Smith Price
April 9, 1887 Little Rock, Arkansas, – June 3, 1953
A pioneer for African-American and female composers
classical composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher
First African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.
Education: New England Conservatory of Music
Florence was born 1887, as a child, Smith received musical instruction from her mother a soprano and pianist who guided her early music education; she published musical pieces while in high school. She attended Capitol Hill School in Little Rock, graduating as valedictorian in 1903. Florence at age 14 then studied piano and organ at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, which was a notable achievement for a black woman at that time. In 1907, she received degrees as an organist and as a piano teacher.
After graduation, Smith returned to Arkansas to teach music at the Cotton Plant–Arkadelphia Academy in Cotton Plant, Woodruff County. She left Cotton Plant after only one year, however, to teach at Shorter College in North Little Rock Pulaski County), where she remained until 1910. In that year, however, Smith moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she was head of the music department at Clark University until 1912.
There she met and married Mr. Thomas J. Price an attorney in 1912. Price established a music studio taught piano lessons, and wrote short pieces for piano. Despite her credentials, she was denied membership into the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association because of her race.
On June 3, 1953, Price died from a stroke in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 66.
She is a pioneer and an award-winning pianist and composer who became the first African-American woman in the United States to be to have her work performed by a major symphony and to be recognized nationally for her accomplishments. She has written 300 compositions: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music, and music for solo instruments. in 2009 a collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned home.