Naida McCullough

Naida McCullough
Naida McCullough, from a 1928 newspaper.
Born	1901 Colorado
Died	September 19, 1989 California
Nationality	American
Other names	Naida McCullough Banks
Occupation	pianist, activist
Years active	1920s-1950s

Naida Portia McCullough (born about 1901 — September 19, 1989) was an American educator, pianist, and composer based in Los Angeles.

Early life[]

Naida McCullough was born in Colorado, the daughter of George A. McCullough and Georgia A. McCullough. She was raised in Denver, where she began as a performer and learned to play the church organ,^[1][2] and graduated from Los Angeles High School in the winter class of 1917.^[3]

She had a sister, Yolande McCullough; the sisters taught music classes together as young women.^[4][5] Yolande married Leonard Stovall, a doctor in World War I who worked on tuberculosis prevention after the war.^[6][7]

College activities[]

McCullough studied music was described in 1921 as "the first colored girl to graduate from the music department of the University of Southern California".^[8] She was the first African American woman to receive a Pi Kappa Lambda Key (Music).^[9][10] McCullough was a founding member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority chapter at USC, and she helped to found the chapter at UCLA in 1925, and was a founding member of the west coast graduate chapter, in 1927.^[11][12] She performed at the national gatherings of the sorority in Philadelphia in 1925,^[13] and in 1932 in Los Angeles.^[14][15]

As a student McCullough was also active in the Junior Branch of the NAACP's Los Angeles chapter.^[16] As a leader of that organization in 1925, she worked on a production of W. E. B. Du Bois's pageant, The Star of Ethiopia at the Hollywood Bowl,^[17] then led a boycott of the same production, when it was taken over by more established theatre professionals.^[18][19]

Career[]

McCullough played gave concerts, including her own compositions in the program of piano music. "Genius is the only fitting description of this remarkably talented young woman", according to a 1936 report, remarking especially on her own works, "Hawaiian Rain Shower" and "E Flat Sonata", and her rendition of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's "I'm Troubled in Mind".^[20] She joined the Los Angeles Musicians Association in 1931.^[21] She accompanied singers Florence Cole Talbert and Lillian Evanti.^{[22][23][24][25]} In 1937 she visited Hawaii to give performances and study at the University of Hawaii.^[26][27] In 1940, she and singer gave a concert together at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, to benefit a tuberculosis rest home in Duarte, California.^[28]

McCullough also taught kindergarten in Los Angeles, and worked with principal Bessie Burke at the Holmes Avenue School.^[29][30] She sometimes gave lectures on Hawaii to community groups, after her studies there.^[31] Because she was a member of the board of the Musicians' Congress, her name came up in a state Senate report on "un-American activities in California".^[32]

Personal life[]

Naida P. McCullough eloped with realtor Fitzhugh L. Banks in January 1940;^[33] they divorced a few months later.^[34] Naida McCullough died in 1989, aged 88 years.

References[]