AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN
The accompaying photo of Azalia Hackley (1867-1922) may give you an impression of who she was. That impression is probably reinforced when you learn the former Michigan schoolteacher edited the womens' section of a Denver newspaper, organized folk-song festivals, directed the choir at her church (and her lawyer husband promoted sending African-Americans to Africa).
That would be a misapprehension.   She was, indeed, all those things. But Azalia was also a political activist and bel canto concert soprano, who publicly embraced her African-American heritage.
Her father was a Michigan blacksmith, her mother the free-born child of an escaped slave. After the end of the Civil War, they moved to her father's birthplace of Murfreesboro TN, to start a school for emancipated slaves. Emma was born in Murfreesboro; but in 1870 when the Ku Klux Klan took action against the school, however, the family left for the growing city (80,000) of Detroit.
In their new home, the Smiths started 3-year old Azalia with piano lessons, and soon added voice and violin. She sang and played piano for dances at Capital high school; at 19 she graduated with honors and a teaching certificate from Washington Normal School (now part of Wayne State University).   For the next seven years she taught at Detroit's Clinton Elementary, performed with the Musical Society and taught piano.
In 1894 she married University of Michigan graduate Edwin Hackley, lawyer and Colorado newspaper publisher. They settled in Denver, where Azalia acquired a conservatory B.A. from the University of Denver while directing several church and community choirs. She also founded Denver's Colored Womens' League, co-founded the patriotic Order of Lybians with Edwin, and served as womens' editor for her husband's newspaper, 'The Denver Statesman'. But altitude created health problems for Ms. Hackley; she left for Philadelphia in 1901 to be music director at Episcopal Church of the Crucifixion, and she founded and led the large 'People's Chorus'.
Edwin followed soon after, but his career languished; he soon took a job as a postman. Azalia moved to Paris to study voice with Polish opera singer Jan de Reszke in 1904-05 (later drawing on this training to develop singers Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes). When she returned to the US, she travelled the country, appearing with Walter Craig's New York Orchestra, plus Denver, Chicago, and other cities in the US and Canada. Briefly, she worked for Flo Ziegfeld Sr. at Chicago Musical College, attempting to establish a curriculum for school-teachers. When that failed, she organized concert tours that featured Negro Spirituals, culminating at the Tokyo World Sunday-School Convention.
In 1921, Azalia fell ill in San Diego and returned to live with her sister in Detroit. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in December 1922 - still married to Edwin. Her efforts to recognize and uplift her people remain: a century of teaching spirituals in public schools, the success of her students, and memorials at schools and museums across the nation.
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