During the 1930s and 1940s, the Black press provided some of the most detailed accounts of Florence Price’s compositional activity. The Black press presented a counterinstitution to mainstream media and, as such, reported on Price with the awareness that her accomplishments would be experienced vicariously through a readership that encompassed much of the nation’s Black demographic. In comparison, coverage of Price’s work in the white-authored press is less extensive, and often superficial in tone – though it, too, offers crucial information about Price’s career. This chapter charts the relationship between Price and the Black press across multiple contexts, from her childhood in Little Rock through the apex of her compositional career to the final years of her life. In doing so, it highlights a perpetual tug-of-war that emerges in her critical reception: namely, a discourse that concomitantly exceptionalizes and de-exceptionalizes Price, emphasizing her distinctiveness as much as her embeddedness within Black institutional life.

Women’s musical networks in the United States were largely fractured along the color line. While Florence Price found acceptance within some white women’s musical organizations, a number of them were invested in white supremacy (a dynamic that was deeply rooted in the exclusionary and expedient practices of white women suffragists). Black women’s activism formed a necessary antidote to these conditions. African American women’s cultural organizing wove into the city’s Black concert scene, generating the musical sisterhood to which Price belonged. The result birthed a dynamic era of classical music-making in what came to be known as the Black Chicago Renaissance. Using a Black feminist framework, this chapter examines the Black feminist bonds between Price, the Bonds family (Margaret and Estella), and Marian Anderson, while citing further individuals (e.g., Nora Holt) and institutions (e.g., the National Association of Negro Musicians) that enabled Black women to thrive in the classical music sphere.