William Levi Dawson

Mark Hugh Malone has taught in Mississippi at Pearl River Community College, William Carey University, the University of Southern Mississippi, and more during his forty-six-year career in education. As curriculum designer for the Mississippi Arts Commission, he has created numerous arts-integrated curricula focused on the Mississippi Blues Trail, Mississippi's bicentennial, the Natchez Trace, the TVA, the Mississippi River flood of 1927, Hurricane Camille, and Walter Anderson.

In William Levi Dawson: American Music Educator, Mark Hugh Malone has woven the first true narrative of Dawson's life. Relying on his hours of interviews with Dawson, Malone's meticulous research fills in the gaps to tell a complete story of one of the most iconic figures of twentieth-century American music. Here Malone lays out Dawson's early years in the segregated 1920s, his meticulous work with the Tuskegee Choir which caused him to quickly rise to national prominence, and his later years as an honored senior statesman of choral music in the United States. Malone lays out a compelling story of the difficulties Dawson faced earning an education, facing racism from critics, and persevering to serve his students and art. This book should be required reading for all Dawson devotees as well as scholars of spirituals.--Vernon Huff, director of choral activities at the State University of New York at Fredonia William Levi Dawson: American Music Educator by Mark Hugh Malone is an impeccably well researched biography of a man who should be a household name, but somehow isn't. . . . The book makes excellent and thoughtful use of author Malone's interviews, as well as the personal memories and photographs of Dawson, his family, and peers to round out the person and the times. The biography tells an important story.--Claire Matturro "Southern Literary Review"