Oriental American Opera Company, 1892.Mr. Graffe, a millionaire from Syracuse, New York, wanted to prove to the world that Negroes could sing opera music as well as folk songs and financed for one year a company known as the Oriental Opera Company. Madam Plato and Sidney Woodward were the star singers and Mr. J. Rosemond Johnson was the musical director. Miss Eartha M. White, a lyric soprano from the National Conservatory of Music, was accepted as a singer. They opened at the Palmer Theater on Broadway in New York City and proved to be so successful that they traveled for one year in the United States and Europe.Eartha Mary Magdelene White was born on November 8, 1876, in Jacksonville Florida. She was the thirteenth child of Clara English White, a former slave. The previous twelve children all died before Eartha was born, the oldest living only until the age of ten. Eartha attended the Stanton School, the Divinity School, and Cookman Institute. In New York City she attended Madam Hall''s Beauty Culture School, and at the National Conservatory of Music she was tutored by Harry T. Burleigh and J. Rosemond Johnson.Over the years Eartha White operated a department store, a taxi service, and a steam laundry, and was licensed as a real estate broker, a census taker and a social worker. Known as the Angel of Mercy for her lifetime of humanitarian and civic service, Eartha White served the sick during the Spanish American War, was the only woman member of a sixty-member inter-racial War Camp Community Service Conference during World War I, served as a member of President Wilson''s White House Conference, and functioned as Colonel of the Women''s National Defense Program under Mary McLeod Bethune during World War II. In Jacksonville, she re-organized the Union Benevolent Association and established the Clara White Mission to assist the less fortunate members of her community.
The University of North Florida acquired a portion of the estate of Eartha M. White in 1975, with the assistance of Dr. Daniel L. Schafer, a professor in the History Department. The Eartha M. White Collection includes letters, photographs, books, and scrapbooks relating to black history and the history of Jacksonville.
Photograph. Eartha White is seated in the center, the third person from the left
The University of North Florida acquired a portion of the estate of Eartha M. White in 1975, with the assistance of Dr. Daniel L. Schafer, a professor in the History Department. The Eartha M. White Collection includes letters, photographs, books, and scrapbooks relating to black history and the history of Jacksonville.
Photograph. Eartha White is seated in the center, the third person from the left
