Harry Burleigh

Harry Burleigh (born Henry Thacker Burleigh, December 2, 1866 – September 12, 1949) was an American classical composer, arranger, and professional singer known for his baritone voice. The first black composer who was instrumental in developing characteristically American music, Burleigh made black music available to classically trained artists both by introducing them to spirituals and by arranging spirituals in a more classical form.

Burleigh also introduced Antonín Dvořák to Black American music, which influenced some of Dvořák's most famous compositions and led him to say that Black music would be the basis of an American classical music.

Early and family life

Henry "Harry" Thacker Burleigh was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1866 to Elizabeth Burleigh and Henry Thacker. Burleigh's maternal grandfather, Hamilton Waters, was granted manumission from slavery in Somerset County, Maryland, after paying $55 ($50 for him and $5 for his mother) in 1832 and receiving a certificate of freedom in 1835. They traveled to Ithaca, New York, where two of Waters's half-brothers lived. After his mother died, Waters married Lucinda Duncanson. Their first child, Elizabeth Lovey Waters (who would be Burleigh's mother) was born in Lansing, New York, in 1838. Later that year the family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, where they lived until the 1920s. Elizabeth, who was graduated from Avery College in Pittsburgh in 1855, was denied a teaching position in the Erie Public Schools, but taught at the Colored School for many years.