Lois Towles
African-American pianist, music educator and community activist (1912-1983)
Lois Towles (April 4, 1912 – March 18, 1983) was an American classical pianist, music educator, and community activist. Born in Texarkana, Arkansas, she grew up in the town straddling the Arkansas and Texas line. From an early age, she was interested in music and began piano lessons at age 9. After graduating as valedictorian of her high school class, she obtained a bachelor's degree from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and worked as a high school teacher from 1936 to 1941. In 1942, Towles enrolled in the University of Iowa and earned two master's degrees in 1943. She went on to further her education at Juilliard, the University of California, Berkeley, the Conservatoire de Paris, and the American Conservatory at Fountainebleau.
From 1943 to 1952, Towles was an assistant professor of music at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She had a distinguished performance career from her debut in 1947 until her retirement in 1966. From 1949 to 1955, she lived between Paris and the United States, traveling between the continents for recitals and modeling engagements. She and her sister, Dorothea Towles Church, became some of the first African-American models to gain an international reputation and Towles was featured in both Ebony and Jet.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lois Towles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.