Our Ancestors Were Messy - Nora Holt: The Lives and Loves of Harlem's Legendary Blonde Bombshell

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

A musical prodigy from Kansas becomes a renowned race woman in Chicago, a tabloid sensation in Harlem, and a musical force the world over. These are the many lives and loves of one of the most famous women of the era: Nora Holt. Starring Natalie Tulloch and Christabel Nsiah-BuadiSupport this independent production and access bonus content at https://ourancestorsweremessy.supercast.comStay in touch at [e-mail] the show on Instagram at @ourancestorsweremessyFollow the show on TikTok at @ourancestorsweremessyLearn more about the show at https://ourancestorsweremessy.comListen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@OurAncestorsWereMessy SOURCESNora Holt: The Most Famous Woman You've Never Heard Of by Imani PerryNora Holt by Matthew GuerrieriNora Holt: New Negro Composer and Jazz Age Goddess by Cheryl A. Wall"Strange What Cosmopolites Music Makes of Us": Classical Music, the Black press, and Nora Douglas Holt's Black Feminist Audiotopia by Lucy Caplan 

The Secret Adventures of Black People Presents, Our ancestors were messy. Because if this is the worst that they thought she'd done, they didn't even know the half. Today, we travel across America and around the globe to follow the woman, nicknamed the greatest newspaper copy in the world, Nora Holt.

Everywhere she goes, crowds go wild. We'll watch her evolve from a young prodigy to a daring race woman. So Nora gathers them together at the YMCA in Broad. and tells them that the Chicago race riots have begun. And from a daring race woman to a tabloid sensation. She saw Josephine Baker and got him fired. This episode stars Natalie Tullough, VP of Audio at Hello Sunshine.

He said he didn't need any of that because she wasn't divorced. And Krista Bell in Sierra Boydee, CEO of MyLens Media and founder of Audio Diaspora. So we could be listening to her music right now and we don't know. We wouldn't even know it. And for the final time this season, your host, Nicole Hill. She's like, why don't you buy me an apartment in Harlem? And I'll do my weekends there and my weekdays here. This is Our Ancestors Were Messy, a show about our ancestors and all their drama.

Way to Barry the League. Excellent story telling. Oh, God. Christabel, where are you now and where are you from? I am a British-born Ghanaian, Scottish-born-Garnean, raised in London, and landed in Los Angeles via New York and Barbados. Wow, okay, Natalie, same question. I'm an alien.

I'm Jamaican in New York. I'm a young kid. Born and raised in Jamaica, but I came to New York right after high school for college. and I have not been back. Well, you know, for holiday and stuff. What kind of blacks are you? Don't let the complexion fool you. I'm blackety, black, black, black, black.

Black. I'm a global black. I am very proud of my ganianness, but I also recognize where I sit as a global black person, but as a global person. was raised to be like people are people for sure, but I'm always a proud British-born, Ghanaian, black girl. Yeah, I think we share that in common because obviously I'm a transplant, but I try not to

separate blackness because whether I was born in Jamaica, Ghana or the US, I don't ever want to play that game of creating fractions or defining my blackness by differences. As far as I'm concerned, the source is the same. And so whether you're from Ghana

or Jamaica or African American the black. How often do you think about your legacy? I don't know if I do. It sounds like it might be dishonest, right? But I think I'm so busy being in it. I'm not sitting there going,

what's my legacy? And it's funny because my daughter is obsessed with Hamilton right now. So even just today, we're watching Hamilton. And I was like, look at that. Like this man, like Hamilton as a character, annoys me because he's driven by ego because he's thinking of his legacy. But it's also something I relate to.

You know, I was also raised by immigrants who talked about legacy a lot. They wanted to leave a legacy for me and my, you know, my sister and their grandchildren. in a country that was hostile to them, but also in their home country. So I don't think about legacy a lot, but I do think about impact and community a lot. I think about what is it that we want to build? So maybe that's some kind of different version of legacy.

Do you know what I mean? What about you, Nat? Similar to what Chris was saying, I think about legacy bigger than what I do. I often think about not legacy, but impact. Because legacy just seems to grant from my little life. But I think about impact and it's important not because of anything, but the need is so clear for me of how you feel when you do something that helps other people. And so, yeah, my goal is to get back to that place where whatever I do helps my community.

What you all have said about legacy is going to... It's just unbelievable. I feel like it's like destiny. It's touched on a lot of aspects of the story, so I do think... We're going to have a good talk. Okay. Come with me to the 1920s.

At this point, slavery ended 60 years ago. So freedom is like... It's still kind of new and it feels a little precarious because black people are living under this Jim Crow terrorist threat everywhere. So the community is expecting not just their leaders, but anybody who has secured any kind of power or influence or ability to choose a path that's going to uplift the community and do something to better the conditions of everyone.

If they're not considering the community, they are getting a bit of a side eye because we are just a collectivist people. So when our story begins, our hero, Nora Holt, is she's getting cooked under this community side eye. because for years, headlines have read that she is quote-unquote acting more like white people every day. This is particularly shocking because it's not how she started out. So if it's like a movie picture, it's 1927, we opened in a courtroom in eastern Pennsylvania. Reporters from the black press up and down the East Coast are breathlessly covering every single detail of what's happening in this trial. So this first quote, it's from the Philadelphia Tribune, which is the oldest continuously, publishing black paper in the country.

Mrs. Ray entered the courtroom to the stairs of the curious who crowded the none too large courtroom. She looked neither to her left nor right as she entered with her counsel, tastefully and decidedly femininely, attired, okay, wearing a lightweight coat of a rich, dark blue material and silk lace hose covering her shapely legs. All right, they like ten. Nora is calm and collected, but her husband keeps losing his temper, and that's what's dragging this whole thing out. From where she's sitting, maybe she can see the reporters, but she refuses to give them a comment, even though her husband has been talking to them nonstop, especially the reporters with the Pittsburgh Courier.

So maybe at this point her husband's attorney rises and reminds the judge that his client has been seeking a divorce from Nora on the grounds of adult. and he's trying to get out of a very expensive promise that he'd made to her when they first wed. His attorney announces, actually, no, Your Honor, my client is no longer looking for a divorce. I am going to be submitting an action on his behalf to have the marriage annulled. So at this point, I'm picturing, like, whispers breaking out. Yeah, people are making y'all's faces right now. They're like, what? An annulment?

Don't you have certain rules for an annulment? Like, what do you need to call it an annulment? Well, let's get into it. So, because Nora is probably also wondering what's up with this. So the Afro-American newspaper, another black paper, is there, and they reveal what happens next. Attorney Mr. Chidsey is based in his action on the contention that at the time of his client's marriage should then Mrs. Nora Holt. She was not legally divorced from her previous husband. Scandalist.

In my movie version of this, the courtroom erupts, flashballs, go, gasped. Nora's a bigamist. Nora would not have let them see her sweat she never does, and she may have even breathed the sigh of relief, because if this is the worst that they thought she'd done, they didn't even know the half. This is the story of the woman dubbed the greatest newspaper copy in the world, Nora Holt.

Chapter 1. Lena Douglas Rebel Without a Cause. Nora Holt was actually born Lena Douglas in Kansas City, Kansas, somewhere between 1885 and 1890. She's the daughter of the Reverend and Mrs. Douglas of the AME Church. I read that both her parents were likely enslaved in Kentucky, and then upon emancipation, they moved to Kansas City, and they had Lena there. She grew up playing the organ and church, and by her teen, she's understood to be a prodigy. She decides that she wants to be a composer when she grows up,

which is a person who arranges and writes music like Beethoven and Pharrell. But before she says out to do that, at the age of 15, she gets married, to a man named Sky James. I couldn't find anything about him. Go ahead. I got questions. You said she gets married to him. Does she want to get married to him?

Do we know? Or was she told that's what we have to do because it's the 1920s and, you know, 15-year-old woman? We don't know. I don't know anything about it. 15-year-old girl. 15-year-old little baby. Oh, we know, but you know,

she's 50-year-old woman in 1920, apparently, exactly. Yeah, she's probably like... With dreams and talents. So that's why I'm having a reaction to that. Anyway, please continue. This is good. Hold on to that. on to that. I couldn't find any information about Sky, except for that he's a musician.

And maybe he introduced her to the new black sound coming out of the Midwest and the South, ragtime, which Lena comes to love. It's secular music. So I feel like she probably shouldn't have been listening to it. Like it wouldn't have been cool, but she likes it and she listens to it. She finishes high school and enrolls in Western University to study classical music. The school no longer exists, but back in the day at this time, it's like the number one school to go to if you want to study music in America. Before she goes to school, she says goodbye to her hometown,

she says goodbye to her family and friends, and she says goodbye to husband number one. After two years of marriage to the musician, Sky James, they divorce, and she marries Philip Scroggins. I couldn't find any information about him except that he was a politician. Moving on, I was going to say, she married up.

If she had to do things like help him with his debate prep, she would have been great at it, because Arlina does not back down. Case in point. She's invited to compose her university's theme song, which she proudly does with her father who writes the lyrics. And when she goes to turn the song in, one of the male teachers tries to take credit for the composition.

Lena's like, absolutely not. Both of you, look at your face. Exactly. That's exactly. Different, yes, same stuff. Exactly what Lena says. But this teacher is insistent. Like, if we're going to use this theme song

or if we're going to use this anthem, I have to be credited. Now, what would you all do? Because why? What would you do in this situation? You're Alina. So if she's such an argumentative person, I'm like, okay, I'm thinking she also has aspirations to do big things. So I can also see her, well, not backing down, but negotiating.

Okay, I can give you a little bit of credit, but my name comes first or something. Right? You inspired the composition. You taught me blah, blah, blah. And so I can give you a credit just to get my name out there. So I could see a compromise, actually, if she wants to go further in her career. Right.

I think it was bold that she divorced because I would imagine that was not the done thing at the time. So she clearly was a rebel. She would negotiate. She's got to take this hit. But the hit would be a negotiation. All right. Let me tell you what she does.

Okay. She tears the song up. Ooh! She did what? She tears the song up. Destroyes it. Wow. She is not okay with not getting credit for her work.

Wow. Like start over, go write your own song. Good luck. Exactly. Wow. Mofo. Well, she said. I think we should probably cast our, Lina, no, with this in mind.

So can you both go to page three? And we're going to pick an actress. who we think could play Miss Lena Douglas. Oh. She's gorgeous. Okay, so with the fur coat, the hat, the bold lip, she's given, oh my God, she played, she was in Baby Boy.

She was dressed in color purple. She's given Taraji to me. Taraji, yeah, baby boy. Look at you both of you, same page instantly. You can see she's got fire behind her eyes. Yeah, she would, and the coat. Taraji would wear that. So wonderfully. Can you describe the coat? It's a fantastic, fabulous, well-fluffed fur coat. It's two-toned.

Very expensive looking. Very expensive. Under which she has a collared blouse. Are those pearls? I don't even know. But you know what? She looks expensive. That's what she looks like. And can we also talk about her pose? That is a pose of a confident woman. She has her legs crossed and her arms cross and she's looking directly at the camera. Like, try me. That is the face. She's making. She's making full of eye contact. Yep. Mm-hmm.

So this is who we're picturing as I tell the rest of this story. The name's Cookie Ask About me. All right, so Lena is studying classical music. She's got a really intense course load and very Victorian-era expectations for her behavior, her appearance, and there's no reports of her stepping out of line with this. Like, she's wearing all black. She's being demure. And in this environment, she seems to fall more and more in love with classical music.

She attends a performance by the Russian computer. poser Chikosky. And this is what she says of the experience. I remember when the last song of each instrument had gone away, I was crying softly, not knowing why, but cognizant of but one thing, supreme joy. Wow. She falls in forever love with the opera, with Chikovsky and Russian symphonies, but out of love with husband number two, Phillips Grogens, and at 18, they divorce.

And shortly thereafter, she marries, Bruce. I couldn't find any information about him except that he was a barber. Interesting. You're both making faces. I wonder what the criteria is. Is it? Yeah. Because we don't know anything about them.

Are they older, younger, just free spirits? What's her thing? Yeah, I don't get it. And I would hope that Bruce, who's the name Bruce? Bruce Jones. Bruce the barber. Bruce Jones, the barber. I would hope that he.

is indeed a free spirit because there's no way he's going to keep up with this woman who is intensely curious and, you know, feels things deeply and is passionate, clearly. So, yeah, these marriage choices, I don't know, ma'am. Lena graduates a valedictorian of Western University. Of course she does. And then about 10 years passed seemingly uneventfully until we arrive in 1917. So now she's around 28 and she's decided to pursue her master's at Chicago Musical College. She packs her bags, she kisses her life in Kansas goodbye, including husband number three. Look at your face, you already know. We already can matter.

Yeah, exactly. At this stage, it's a trend, right? Three prints. You already know. She kisses husband number three goodbye and makes her way to Chicago. In Chicago, Lena is writing more compositions for. for her own personal collection. She's studying classical music.

She's doing her thing, but she's broke. And she is single for the first time since she was 15. So she goes out and she books two gigs, the first one. Chicago's Red Light District was down by the wharves and home to some of the city's classiest brothels. So classy, in fact, that they offered their guests, their patrons, live musical entertainment. So by 1917, Ragtime's out,

but now it's all about the blues. and Lena would go to the brothels and perform popular blues standards, including what became her signature song, My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll. Can I have you read the lyrics? They're on page four. I feel like Chris is best student to read this as a performer.

Yeah, cheers, mate. That's not saying, I don't want to do that. I'm just too classy. I'll do it, though. You're a performer. This is you, girl. All right, here goes. My man rocks me with one steady roll.

There's no slipping when he wants, he takes hold. Is that meant to say once it takes hold? Yeah, I don't know how, but that's what it says, yeah. I looks at the clock and the clock struck one. I said, now, Daddy, we got fun. He kept rocking with one steady roll. Damn. Okay.

That's a yeah. And the clock keeps rocking until like six or seven, six or seven. something like that. With one steady row? Sure does. So we're not in Kansas anymore. So now on to the second gig. Sometimes wealthy white Chicagoans would host dinner parties

and they would hire a black singer to perform. Sometimes that singer was Lena. And their requests were not for ragtime and they were not for blues. But they wanted to hear would have probably left Lena feeling a bit weird to be performing, but ever since those kids at Fisk opened the door, there's no turning back. So in 1871, a couple decades before Lena was born, the Black College Fisk University down in

Tennessee was broke and about to close. They had a music program run by a white guy named Mr. George White, so we'll call him Mr. White. And he, along with everybody else, is like, racking their brains, trying to figure out, like, how can we keep this thing going? How can we keep this thing going? How would we save the school? And then he happened to hear his. students singing what they called plantation songs or spirituals. Oh, God. And he was like, look at your face is already, but he was like, oh my God, white people will love this.

Let's tour and perform this music for money. You're both falling apart. The kids were hesitant because a Negro spiritual is truly a sacred thing. And they knew that, and they knew it was sacred to their elders and to their faith. And singing them for white people for money was probably not going to be cool. so they tell them no. And at first they tour and they sing whatever songs

that they were singing before, but they slip a few spirituals in here and there and the response from the audience is so overwhelming that everything else gets cut and they just sing spirituals. Mr. White names the group the Fisk Jubilee Singers

and they tour the country and then the world performing for presidents and Queens 10,000 person crowds, largely white, and they end up raising enough money to buy the school land and Fiske University is still there to this day.

So at this time, you know, some black people are really unhappy to see something so holy and black turned into commercial entertainment. But even still, black schools across the country start their own Jubilee programs and white people hire women like Lena to come sing a Negro spiritual or two at their dinner parties. In exchange for money for their fundraisers or just in general? Well, they pay Lena. So Lena has money and people can hear, you know. Oh, Nina's making it. She's making it back. She's making bank.

And Fisk is making bank. Everybody's making money. And, you know, I think, you know, I've watched a lot of, a couple of documentaries about the Fisk Jubilee singers. Obviously, they were like historic. What they did was incredible. But it was tricky at the time. It was tricky. But also, I think at first I was a bit judgy, but thinking about it, it doesn't change the Negro spirituals.

It doesn't change the importance it is for our community. because they're not enjoying it in the way and it doesn't have the same meaning. It's a performance for them. That was our life, that was our everything. That was life or death. That's the emotional and support of someone working on a plantation, right? That was communication.

That was signal. That was a map. And so I get why some people would be salty, but we have an education. the school is still open. We have a recording of these beautiful songs. What's the price? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There was going to be a price. And are there any other options? I don't know if there are any other options. If this was happening in 2024, I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do this a different way. Yeah.

Yeah. But in the 1920s, I don't know if there would have been other options. After a year of studying in 1918, Lena graduates with a master's degree in music composition, making her among the first women of any race to earn this degree in America. And can you guess what she does to celebrate? Does she tear it up? You know her by now, so what would she do? Is she single at this point?

She is. She finds a husband to celebrate. You're exactly right. She gets married to husband number four, George Holt. Now, this one's different because I have some information about George. He is in his 60s. She's 29. He got his start training racehorses, which led him into the world of organized bedding, which segued into the black restaurant business, which expanded into the black hotel and theater business.

And finally, he became the treasurer of Liberty Insurance Company, one of the first black-owned insurance agencies with offices in the heart of Black Chicago Bronzeville. He is a very wealthy man. Somehow, he and Lena meet, and eventually they travel to Michigan and, they elope. Because he is so rich and she is so accomplished, the black press is tipped off about their nuptials. And so they find the couple

and they ask them for comment about why they didn't do a wedding befitting their station. And 29-year-old, Lena, says, we wanted to play the tricks that the young folk play. How old is she? She's 29.

Young folk play. But she's 29 in 1980. So she's halfway through her life. They're like years old. He's 60. So what does that make him a ghost? I know, right? Yeah.

I don't understand. She's trying to keep him alive. She can't. Oh, no. Lena, she seems quite taken with George's ability to reinvent himself. She calls him inspiring and she raves about his intellect and his taste and the gift that he got her. The world's, this is what you said, quote, the world's finest piano, a Mason and Hamlin concert grand. I Googled it.

It is worth $30,000 today. Wow. Okay. So now she's able to compose up a storm. They buy season passes to the symphony, and they travel, travel, travel. Now that she's married, she decides to go by an entirely new name and identity. From here on out, she will be Mrs. Nora Holt racewoman. That is the title of chapter two. Wow.

Wait, wait, wait, pause. Do we know more about the name change of like how she's... Nora seems like it was maybe her middle name or maybe like her actual first name and people were calling her Lena. There's like different accounts everywhere. But Nora seems to have been in the mix and she just decides to go by Nora from now on. Okay. Unless there's a husband, she's avoiding. True.

Oh, yeah. We're about to find out. So race men and women were people who dedicated their lives to the betterment of the conditions of the black race. and many were part of the black elite. This goes hand in hand. If you're successful, you're not doing something for the community. People are going to call you white. And you know, that's a devastating, devastating thing to be called.

So for women, the expectations were especially pronounced. In 1895, so this is back when Nora was a baby, 30 years after the end of slavery, this thing happened that set women off. So a white lady reporter was writing letters to other white reporters and asking them to take a stand against. lynching. The president of the Missouri Press Association got this letter, and he wrote back being like, lynching is none of my business. It's not white people's problem. Linching is the fault of black women because they are liars and they have no morals and they're proud to be quote unquote prostitutes.

That's his language. Wow. I'm confused. So confused. The logic isn't logic in right here now. At all. It doesn't for a lot of people. So this reporter, when she gets this letter back, she gives it to the black press, and it goes like Victorian era viral. So they demand that this man apologized and black women call it, quote, their shot heard around the world. So the ladies hear about this, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, get on the phone. There's no phones. They're writing to each other. They're being like, have you heard about this?

No, not on our watch. So they organize the National Association of Colored Women, and they choose the motto, lift as we climb. The group decides that their focus will be education for women and children, civil rights and equal protection for all, and above all, for women, respectability. So they believe that the view of them is so low. Some of them have actually been enslaved. So they know what people think of them. And they're like, we have to do the opposite. We have to be above reproach so that we can prove everybody wrong. And this is the crowd.

Every African and Caribbean parent. Sign up for that last part. And still tell their children, don't embarrass me. What are you wearing? What are you doing? And this is the crew that Nora has decided she wants to run with. Nah, that ain't going to work. I still going to work.

Night day one. First meeting from the notes. Nora stormed out. Stormed up. This is what she's picked. She's like, I can do this. I can ride with these women. So here we go.

All right, Nora. Let's see. Good luck. Good luck. Nora lands a job at the Chicago Defender, America's number one black newspaper. She's a music critic, one of the first women of any race

to provide music criticism for a major publication. Oh my God. Wow. Yeah, she's doing it. She used her column to spell out her theory of what could lead to the best outcomes for black people. Can I have you?

I should have kept track of whose turn it was. Oh, no, it's Nat's turn on page five. It's a nine. She got the respectability. Respectability. Do you realize what a tremendous moral weapon the Negro holds by Fertrip's wonderful music? Negro music, if used as propaganda, might easily become the most potent factor in softening prejudice and creating an understanding between the races. Lovely quote, but bullshit. You can play the most beautiful music. You can sing the most

beautiful song, do the most beautiful dance. You cannot dance your way to freedom. Nope. The theory here, what she's kind of, what they're thinking, at this time, people think black people do not have the intellectual capacity to speak English correctly, to make beautiful music, to understand anything. And so she's thinking, we need to show them. So she gives this example a very out of touch example. We love her so much. But she says to her readers, like somewhere around at a height, 500,000 people are reading this newspaper all over the country. Many of them poor, like almost exclusively black. She's like, hey guys, me and my husband, we were at the symphony. You know how you go to the symphony. And we were there to hear Tchaikovsky. And he was so beautiful. And the white lady next to me just turned to me. And then we started discussing the movement. and the symphony and the instruments and she completely forgot about race for one minute. And I think that if we are in more situations like

this, then we can create change. You all, when you come to the symphony, meet me during intermission and we can talk about this, but like, none of them are going to the symphony. She's very excited about her idea. I want to give her grace because we're not there and I get it. I truly do

because there's always a point in your life where if you think if you just do that thing and perform, they will get it that I bleed too. Exactly. It never happens. Yeah, go ahead. I'm vexed. That's why I was interrupting.

I'm also speaking from a different time with my privilege of how I get to show up, right? So I get it. I can see why back then that's a logical. That's a logical if they can see our humanity that we have the brain capacity. and if you give us the opportunity to read and write, we will show you that we're just as brilliant. I get that urge, right? Because you're like, it's just an opportunity.

If they see that we're human. Then they'll like us too. Yeah. But no one's going to like you if they don't want to like you. Nora wants to create change, not just through music, black classical music. She really hates jazz, which she feels is debauchrous and not advancing the cause of freedom. She calls it one of America's

terrible creations on par with prohibition and the KKK. What happened to her? Oh no. Zora, this is where... It's that old man. This is where we break up. Yeah, it was that old man she married.

What's she talking about? She starts a magazine called Music and Poetry and co-founds the Chicago Music Association. And then through her column, she calls for a national association of Negro musicians, and people are very into the same. idea. So she hears, they start writing to her and she hears that some other people were trying to do

the same thing, including a DC music teacher named Henry Grant. She's like, let's work together. So they plan a conference that will kick off their association, and it's to be held in Chicago starting July 29, 1919. This will be her greatest achievement as a racewoman. Coming up, Nora and her conference, enter the Reds. summer. Thank you to everybody that signed up to be a member of the household this season. The household is the community of donors that support this indie show with either a one-time gift or a monthly donation. I shared a bit more about this on Minnesota 6th, but I'll say it here too. Because of the household and their support, I'm thrilled to share that I'm going to be able to

bring you a couple more episodes. I haven't found a way to fund the production of a whole other season, but you're going to get some new stories coming your way very soon. lots of them. If you would like to join the household, then all you have to do is head on over to our Ancestorswemessy.supercast.com and sign up to become a monthly donor, and when you do that, you'll have access to the director's commentary for each episode, bonus content, and deleted scenes. You can also give a one-time donation that still makes a huge difference. Join the household today at our Ancestorsweremessi.com. The link is also in the show notes. We now return to our ancestors were messy.

The summer of 1919 is America's first summer since the end of World War I and racial tensions everywhere are very high. The Great Migration is in effect, so black people are fleeing the South by the hundreds of thousands. And a lot of them are ending up in the cities and white folks. They're having feelings about it. So at the same time, millions of servicemen, black and white, they come home, they go out looking for jobs. White men find that they have to compete with black men for the jobs and sometimes they lose because the employers know they can pay the black people less.

But then the white guys get mad at the black guys. As they do. As they do, because that makes sense. And finally, I like it also sounds, it's too soon. Still too soon. It sounds way too soon. Triggered. Everybody's trickered.

Finally, one of the last reasons or one of the other reasons is that white people have really been working themselves up about this idea that because black men went overseas, particularly the ones who went to Paris, they're going to expect to be treated like this back home. And this is not like a new expectation. They're not like, oh, my gosh, we should be treated like this. They already know. It's just that being overseas told them like, oh, this is literally possible. We're not that far away from this. And leaders like WV Du Bois called on them to not just return from fighting,

but to return to fighting. In response, lynchings increase, KKK membership increases. And everyday people, not even just like the ones who you would think they would join the KKK, but like people who seem nice and find this adds to the terrorism. People who seem chill join mobs. I refer to my previous comment too soon. These people join mobs, violent mobs.

and attack black communities. Oftentimes, they're fueled by false threats of black violence spread with the help of the white press. Sounds so, so, so familiar. So familiar. So it's July 27th, 1919, just two days before the National Association for Negro Musicians Conference is set to begin.

Nora's probably running all over town. Meanwhile, a 17-year-old named Eugene Williams and his friends decided to go hang out at the beach at Lake Michigan, along with tons of other. the Chicagoans. This is the hottest day of the year. Eugene absentmindedly drifts into this area of the beach that's understood to be whites only. It's not officially, but it's understood to be. And a white man sees him and throws stones at him, and one hits Eugene in the head, and he falls in the water, and he drowns. Black beachgoers call the cops. The cops arrive. They refuse to make an arrest.

Black beachgoers are furious. Then in response to them not being okay with this, a group of white beachgoers leave the scene, drive to a black neighborhood, and begin randomly shooting into homes and businesses and attacking people on the streets. Hundreds of others join in with this. They're not even associated with the beach thing. They just hear about it.

And now they're an angry mob. And into this, 200 of the best classically trained black musicians from across the country arrive for the first ever National Association for Negro Music. conference. The NORG gathers them together at the YMCA in Bronzeville and tells them that the Chicago

race riots have begun and that the mob has either destroyed or is targeting a lot of the places that they had planned to meet in. The police were not stopping them and no black people were safe. She asked them if they want to cancel the conference, presumably so that the attendees can get out of the city, but they decide to go forward. So that's what they do while the riots rage on for days around them. Now, the white press didn't tell their readers the full truth about things like this, but the Chicago Defender and other black papers had been publishing reports of how that summer,

veterans in D.C. and Houston and Charleston, had been organizing a resistance against similar violence. So in Chicago, there's this group of young black men. They were members of America's first all-black national government. Guard unit, the 8th Illinois Regiment, known as the Fighting Eighth, and they see what the mob is doing to their community, and they decide absolutely not. So they break into a nearby armory, they seize weapons and supplies, they distribute them, and they fight back to protect their community. The mob was reportedly caught completely off guard. After about a week of fighting, the U.S. National Guard arrives in Chicago, the official death count is reported to be 38 people, 23 black, and

and 15 white, but historians say that in actuality, 350 people lost their lives that week, while hundreds more were injured and thousands of black homes and businesses were destroyed. The Chicago race riot was the bloodiest in the city's history and one of 25 recorded race riots that year. And that summer becomes known as the Red Summer of 1919. team. I just, I was joking when I said too soon, too soon, but I wasn't joking. It's this idea that the nation did not like confident black people returning and had to shut them down feels so familiar to this current moment from 2016.

And really, really now where the 47th president has been elected. And no matter what anyone says, it really is a reaction to what people perceive as growing black power or influence. And maybe not just black power. Yeah, we're too much. We're constantly being told. And I'm going to say people of color broadly. But really it's about a shrinking influence of the white. population.

And I'm listening to this and I'm just like, different year, same ship, essentially. Yep. It never gets, the impact, it never, it doesn't ever stop hurting, right? You hear that. And I think for the last few years that we've lived in America and our experiences, is I cannot, I know it's nowhere close to what you just described, but sometimes it feels like the root problem is still there.

And at any moment, we could be right back there. Our lives always feel so fragile to me sometimes. Yes. Understandably, the first National Association of Negro Musicians Conference gets lost in the story of that week, but it's incredibly important to Nora and the people of attendance. With violence all around them, these artists dream of ways to better support black musicians and their music. And at the end of the conference, a young contralto out of Philly named Marion, she's very rattled by the violence. She takes to the mic and she sings a song by Nora's favorite composer Tchaikovsky. And the song is

written from the perspective of a young Joan of Arc saying goodbye to everything that she knows because she's decided to fight and die to protect her home. When she finishes, Nora says that everybody jumps to their feet, they're crying, and Nora spontaneously decides to start a scholarship for the singer. And then everybody else starts contributing to the scholarship so that she can continue her studies. And after that, they decide we are going to make scholarships a part of this conference every single year. So then the group takes a vote on who should be their president. And after putting out the call, organizing the conference,

steering them safely through a race riot. They named Nora their VP. The VP. They choose that music teacher. The VP, you said? The VP, I said, yeah. They chose that teacher from D.C., uh-huh, and he's going to be their president.

Ah! Black women are always too much. Too much. Nora's devastated. She came up with the idea. She came up with the idea. She landed. She landed.

Executed. And then he. Okay. See, that's why we matter. Nora believes that this is happening to her because she's a woman. I agree, Nora. Absolutely. Not long after that, Nora's husband, George, gets sick.

She turns her attention to caring for him and then he passes away the next year. When he does, Nora leaves her post at the Chicago Defender. She ends her magazine music and poetry. She leaves the Chicago Music Association. And she steps down from her VP position at the National Association of Negro Musicians. And after that, she just kind of vanishes. Chapter 3, Nora Holt Jazz Age Goddess. Nora reappears again in New York City two years later in July of 1923.

She's 34 now, and do you want to guess what she's doing? Married two other month? She's getting married, you already know. And this one is a royal affair. Her old colleagues from the Chicago Defender were at the wedding, and they report the following. I think, Chris, this is you. On page six.

I'm so into this. I'm like, oh, okay. Oh, here we go. It was one of the most brilliant weddings in many a season. The bride was a picture of loveliness gowned in a gorgeous creation, beaded with pearls and a tulle veil.

She's said to have worn six carrot diamond earrings in each ear. All right, I wanted you to see. you to see her husband number five. How old is he? Well, let's just take a little look. This is a rendering, but this is her husband number five, Joseph Ray. Who should play him?

How would you describe him? Terrence Howard. Yes, exactly. Like, I'm literally like, this is just, what's the name of that show? Oh, what was it? Empire. Yeah, Empire. Let's just get them.

But that's Terence Howard. He can play suave for show. He's nice. He's clean. That's the clean version of Terrance. Yeah. I could see he has a nice coniac night, a cigar. He's very fine. Very gentlemanly. He could be in Bridgeton today. Yes, he could. He really could.

The always charming Terrence Howard. Thank you, my love. Joseph is fabulously wealthy. He's the secretary to the extraordinarily wealthy steel magnate Charles Schwab, the like of the commercials. Like, wow, okay. That Charles Schwab. He is one of the,

he's one of thousands of employees working for Schwab, but Joseph Ray has his ear. And he uses his proximity to advocate for equal pay for black workers because he is a race man. He linked up with Nora, we don't know how. And they got engaged. Charles Schwab and his wife,

they give their blessing. Joseph is thrilled. and he makes Nora a promise, a very expensive promise. More on that later. Ooh. Anyway, now they're getting married. After the ceremony, the couple and their guests, they head to this lavish reception

where one of the greatest black violinists and composers named Clarence Cameron White performs. Everyone is talking, oh, my God, this event is amazing, it's so elegant. But did you notice Nora? All the guests have been whispering because every time they caught a glimpse of Nora's face behind the veil, they say that she looks completely empty.

Oh. Let me catch you up to what she's been up to. So after husband number four, George Holt's death, prior to this marriage to husband number five, Joseph Ray, Nora had decided to change things up a bit. She moved to New York City. She landed right in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. She met the writer in Harlem Renaissance star Carl Van Vectin, who is white. Carl and Nora become besties.

They spend a ton of time together. letters back and forth and share their philosophies about life. She inspires a character in Carl's best-selling novel. We hate this title, Nigger Heaven. Nobody's cool with that. He feels that he should be able to use that word because he is cool with black people and they use the word. Huh.

No, sir, you cannot. Beg to differ. But that is what he names the book. And Nora inspires one of the main characters. And so in the novel, he gives her a speech that is inspired by Nora's philosophy on life. Sometimes I think I'd like to die. I get so bored. It's so tiresome to be uniformly successful.

I get so fed up with life that I could scream. But while something always seems to bring me back, a new thrill, a new dress, a new dog, something she tapped on wood with her gloved hand. I won't permit myself to be bored. With their face, Chris. He sounds awful. He just turned her into a vapid individual. I can't permit myself to be bored.

And she didn't. There's no mention of her going to hear her beloved Chikovsky or working at the piano, adding to her collection of over 100 personal compositions or any organizing efforts. Instead, it's all stories of her nights spent in Harlem at glamorous jazz joints like The Cotton Club, drinking and dancing and having a ball. On other nights, she may have joined the stars of the Harlem Renaissance at house parties.

Nora and Carl and people like Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks would pack into an apartment and smoke and rub shoulders with every kind of black person in Harlem. Wait, wait, so she's loving jazz now? Right. Mm-hmm. Huh. On some nights at these parties. parties, our musical prodigy turned race woman turned rich divorcee would give a performance of

some of her old signature songs, like My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll, in an expensive, sexy slinky gown. What is happening? And on very special nights, Nora would sing one of the new jazz hits, reportedly, and nothing at all. What happened her? She saw Josephine Baker and got inspired. I need some of that money.

Get a banana. Put it just here and just here and then shake it. But now she's married. Oh, go ahead. All right. Listen, so my husband had to drop off my daughter. Quex is by himself.

So I'm going to get him. Check it on him. But continue if you need to. You know I can jump back in. It's all good. Okay. I'll keep going. Oh, wait.

A bunch of things are about to change for Norah. She's not going to know what happened to her. Oh, Lord. After the break, Nora gives the tabloids a scandal to remember. Y'all, I am putting on my very first live show as part of the Tribeca Audio Storytelling Festival. It will be on Friday, June 13th, spooky in New York City, and you are all invited. You can find the tickets at our ancestors were messy.com. My guest will be the incomparable Emmanuel Barry, executive editor at This American Life,

and the ancestor that I will be telling her about is one who happened to cross paths with every other ancestor that I featured this season. I was reading their autobiography, and I couldn't believe it. They lived such a life, and that's all I can tell you for now. You've got to come to the show and learn more. Space is pretty limited, so grab your tickets today at our AncestorsWMessy.com. The link to the tickets is also in the show notes. Now look, I know most of y'all listening do not live in New York City. I'm aware this will be my first live show, but I promise you it will not be my last. And now for the thrilling conclusion of this season of our ancestors were messy. If Joseph knew anything about Norris Harlem Nights, he probably figured they were behind her now.

After their wedding, they go on an extended honeymoon in Europe, according to the Pittsburgh Courier, who'd been following the Holt-Rae romance very closely. The Pittsburgh Courier was the rival paper to the Chicago Defender where Nora used to work, and by this time, they'd actually overtaken the defender, so now they're number one. When they reported on the nuptials, this is what they said. The poor widow, holding more stock in the Great Liberty Life Insurance Company

than several of the largest directors put together, will add to her possessions $10,000 worth of securities of the U.S. Steel Corp, the gift of Joseph Al Ray to his charming bride. That is a nice gift. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, she has the jewelry, the dress, the grant, and like cash. The Steel Corp of America.

Come on now. And George left her a bunch of property, like money in the bank and property. She said she didn't even need to get married. She didn't even need to get married, exactly. The article was titled More Like, white folks every day. That's a bit judgy, but whatever. But this is the thing we're dealing with this like race woman thing and this.

If you're not actively working to further the race, then what are you doing? Yeah, but you don't have to be poor doing it. You can further the race and also make bank. So for her, the rumors weren't that she had married for money since she had so much already. The rumors were that she married for more money. And for Joseph, the rumors were that because she was raising his social stock so much, That's why he did it. And so behind his back, they're actually calling him Mr. Holt.

Oh. That's a tricelair. That's so wrong. Like, she's too much and he's not enough. Yes. That's exactly what they're. That's the vibe. Yeah.

So after their whirlwind honeymoon, Nora and Joseph returned home to his lavish accommodations in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, headquarters that this is where Schwab's steel empire is located. And the Pittsburgh Courier thought that that choice of a dress for Nora was so funny. So they're like, this is not going to work. You're never going to make it in the little town of Bethlehem. So the plan was that Nora would stay home, maybe compose a little, and raise Joseph's

two kids from a previous marriage, while Joseph traveled the country on behalf of Bethlehem's steel. So what actually happened was that Nora used any excuse she could to get back to New York City. Joseph is very shocked by this. He's like, why can't you stay home? She's like, Joseph, why don't you buy me an apartment in a house? Harlem and I'll do my weekends there and my weekdays here. How old are the kids?

I don't know. They don't say, but they sound young. They're school age for sure. Okay. I kind of like, you're married and you're raising these kids. I don't care how many nannies you have. If you agree to help care for the kids, you're, you should help care for the kids. This is, this is a good point.

But she's like, I will on the weekdays and on the weekend. Joseph is like, we literally just got married. Why do you need weekends off? And she's like, I'm bored. She accuses him of being jealous of her fame. They fight. And then she hops on the train to New York City, stays with her friends,

imagining enjoys nights full of jazz and liquor, whatever she wants to do. You know, I get it, though, right? She's, what, 34, two kids that are her stepkids. she has to kind of be on our schedule. She's never done that before. I get it. So after a year and a half of this going back to New York all the time,

Joseph alleges that Nora had spent only 32 days at home with the kids after a year and a half with him and his kids. The rest of the time, she's staying in the city at Carls or wherever, and people were no longer calling him Mr. Holt behind his back. They were saying it to his face when he was over it. I'm just perplexed, though, because I'm, I'm really, really trying to understand, because I don't get greedy from her. I really don't.

So I'm trying to figure out, did she just really love this guy and really wanted it to work? But if you look to miserable at the wedding, like, be a runaway bride. Both get out of there. Like, maybe you thought it was a good idea at the time. Maybe now you're like, wait, I've made a terrible mistake. One day around January 1926, Nora leaves her home in Bethlehem. She makes the trek to New York City and, unknowingly, a PI is on her tail.

She arrives in the city. She heads not to Carl Van Vectin's house. The PI follows her to an upscale rooming house in Harlem, which is like a fancy Airbnb. Nora, I imagine, disappears inside. The PI hangs back. He spots a maid and he pulls her aside. He says, you know this lady?

And the maid spills everything. Ooh. I'm picturing the PI. He's like scribbling this all down. his little notebook with like a smirk. Gives her 20 and she just starts stopping. She is definitely worthy of the headlines. What I miss.

So actually you've come just in time to read The Revelation. Revelation. On January 20th, 1926, the New York Amsterdam News, the popular black newspaper based in Harlem, breathlessly reports what happens next. Breathlessly, I'll do my best time. Early Wednesday morning, private detect, broke into a furnished room at 158 West 132nd Street

and exposed attorney William L. Patterson and Mrs. Nora Holt-ray, beautiful wife of Joseph Ray, according to the 12 or more witnesses, 12 or more witnesses, excuse me, 12 or more witnesses in the raiding party, including attorney Patterson's wife. Shame guy is a phrase of that. Anyway, both parties were undressed,

and in bed when the sleuths crashed in the door of the room after its occupants had refused to open it. That's because he was... What's the name of her song? Busy. What's the name of herself? Oh yeah, my daddy rocks me. Yeah, he wrote me.

So what I said. Anyway, the hour was around 4.30 in the morning. 4.30 in the morning. Anyway, a fist fight between Attorney William L. Patterson and one of the detectives took place soon after an entrance was made into the room. Wow. Now Joseph has all he needs to get his divorce. I don't know if I believe that.

Anyway, come on. Well, didn't we start with the court case? Yes. And he said he didn't need any of that because she wasn't divorced. Mm-hmm. Look at these memories. Look at it. Look at us.

Exactly. Um, well, he's, the thing that he's mainly trying to fight is that he'd made her this promise when they first got married. Not money. He wants out of the promise. So now we're in court. Joseph's lawyers have accused her of having been married three times before. It's actually four. And they say that she never divorced one of her husbands, Bruce the barber.

Nora is not worried. She'd served her third husband papers the way that you do when you can't find the person. So Bruce the barber ran out on her. her seemingly. Either way it's legal. So the point goes to Nora. Joseph, who the paper's report as being visibly agitated all the time keeps losing his temper, he tries another route. According to the Baltimore Afro-American, which was covering the trial, this is what happened next. Ears were pricked and next were strained when Mr. Ray declared that on the occasion of one of Mrs. Holt's visits prior to their marriage, she took $12,000 worth of jewelry.

And you proposed to her after suspecting her of taking this jewelry, demanded one of the attorneys. You're asking the right questions there, exactly. Mr. Ray paused for a moment, then answered sharply making no effort to hide his anger. No, she proposed to me. She even made all of the arrangements from sending out the invitations to securing the minister.

Is that why she looks so blank in the face, a liar? Please. Sorry. And also, you are a grown-ass man. You can say no. Are you, do you think you're doing her a favor? And also, if you think she's a thief, you say no. Say no. So now you look dumb. Please continue. Nora is called to the stand. Mrs. Ray, attractively gowned and visibly bored, proceeded to slowly break down her husband's testimony. She and Ray, met before the war. Woo! She kept the receipt! So this is pre-1914.

She is still Lena Douglas. She still lives in Kansas. She is maybe with husband number three or two. We're not quite sure. But they met way, way back. She continues her testimony. Mrs. Ray and Mr. Ray saw very little of each other after this first meeting. During this interval, she married George Holt.

Nora and Mr. Ray again met, and Mr. Ray pursued her. even inviting her to his home before the death of his wife, she declared. Interesting. She denied that she proposed to Mr. Ray, but said that while riding on an eastbound train that Mr. Ray was also on, he came back to her coach and discussed marriage. He then sent her a ring by parcel to her home. Huh, Mrs. Ray denied that she had been accused of the larceny of the jewelry from the Ray home, but admitted that she had been the recipient of many valuable presents from Mr. Ray.

She also related how, at the time of the proposal, Mr. Ray told her that he was willing to place all of his property in their joint names, if she would do the same with her Chicago property. She accepted Ray's promise, which he carried out, but made no promises relative to her own property. Wow. That's a lot. That's a lot of secrets and lies. I'm telling you, man. Some of shake chunky that story.

Yeah. So what was the deal? She's just saying, we met back in the day. I was like, no, thank you. I'm already married. She marries George Holt. So he was pursuing her. All this time.

All this time. She finally gives in. He says, I want to give you all this property. I'll put it all in our joint name. She says, okay. But she said she never promised to do the same with her Chicago property. And he wants that Chicago property. Yes. It makes sense. You know why? Remember we couldn't figure out why she was so sad. She never

cared to that way. She didn't want to. She pursued. She was like, okay, let me give it a try. But her heart wasn't in it. And then he was mad because he didn't get what he wanted ultimately. He was just chasing her. And now he's trying to punish her for it. You can't put her in a cage. Come on out. You can't. You changed him this long. She gave you a pity yes. That's what happened with a pity yes. This is what happens, but you take a pity, yeah. Go y'all's full. See, never do a pity yes.

Never do pity sex. Pity date. Petit anything. You'll regret it. Listeners, you'll regret it. Joseph Ray and his attorneys give comments readily to the press, but Nora remains silent. Nora at first tells Carl Van Vectin, actually, all this press is great for me. I can turn this into money.

But she actually can't because the public is really baffled and a little bit grossed out because up until now they knew her as, a race woman and they covered this like break-in of the room, the drama of it is in every paper. It's just published it again and again. And the main thing that people wanted to hear was her have to testify about the details of this affair. So the public is like... So they turned her into a, basically they turned her into a loose woman. I'll say it. They turned her into a hall.

So it's actually not good for her. And she decides like, I am going to have to leave town until this divorce gets settled. So she rents a storage space and she stores her possessions. including the most valuable thing she owns, the now 200 musical compositions that she's written over the course of her lifetime. Then she dyes her hair platinum blonde, and then...

As you do, she buys a one-way ticket out of town. Chapter 4, goodbye to all that. Nora decides to tour Europe. While the details of her divorce settlement are being battled in court, she does residencies where she sings jazz in glamorous nightclubs in London, Monte Carlo, Berlin.

Paris. Yes. Everywhere she goes, crowds go wild, thinking she's so sexy, her voice is unreal, her skills on the piano are unmatched,

and they're really going wild about the fact that she's a black woman with blonde hair. People cannot get enough of it. Oh my God, can you imagine how many people want to touch it? Not even ready.

Is it yours? Can I touch it? Oh, my God. It's so true. Oh, there's an associated Negro press with correspondence overseas, and they write stories, and then they sell them to the black press back in America. So they are breathlessly covering her travels and her meetings with royalty and celebs and gorgeous gowns and the gifts that they're giving her.

And all the black press all over the country is like, oh my God, thank God for this woman and her outrageous life. The Pittsburgh Courier calls her the greatest copy in the whole wide world. Wow. It's the story world over. You get vilified in the place you're from, you leave, and then everyone goes, you're amazing. We love you.

At the same time that all this is happening, she tells her best friend, Carl Van Vectin, her reaction to the crowd's adoration. Imagine them liking me, and they don't even know a word I'm singing, or what it's all about. I am not greatly enthused. It's a lark for me.

Nora's called back to the U.S. tons of times for this court, you know, the divorce thing. But finally, in 1930, after five years, the court reaches a decision. She was going to have to give up that land that Joseph promised her. But she does get some money and her property is safe. So. Okay. I didn't deal with that.

That's fine. She hasn't lost. Yeah. We're like, okay, okay. We'll take that. We'll take that. Yeah. That's fine.

In theory, she can come back home. So Nora goes to her storage space and she discovers that someone had broken in and they'd specifically stolen every single one of the 200 compositions. She'd been composing her entire life. They're gone. Wow. She decides she's not going to try to recreate them. She's not going to try to go back to Harlem.

She's not going to try to redo any of it. So somebody knew that it was there and that it was valuable. It seems like it. I don't know. I mean, they may have stolen other things. I don't know, but they always say the thing that they, the only thing that everybody ever talks about is the fact that they stole those compositions. Her life.

So we could be listening to her music right now and we don't know. You wouldn't even know it. Mm-hmm. Some dude, just look at all the music created. Right, right. Some dude just stuck his name on it. Mm-hmm. Maybe it was the music teacher from way back in the day.

Or it could just be a very bitter ex-husband who just destroyed them. Right. It could have been Joseph because he didn't get the property. We don't know. We have no idea. It's probably Joseph. I know. I do feel like it was.

It's a Joseph. Yeah, yeah. He's very rich. He could pay somebody to do it. Oh, gosh. So she decides to go back overseas. She keeps touring Jakarta, Indonesia, Singapore, Calcutta, Manila, Tokyo. And finally in 1932, she lands in Shanghai, China.

So in 1932, Shanghai was a fishing village-turned financial hub and the fifth largest city in the world. The U.S. and Britain had set up what was called the International Settlement, which is basically like here, you know, we have Chinatowns. There, this is like America town, Britaintown, but like put together. And so it has its own culture and legal system that operated independent of the Chinese government and their rules where anything goes. Gambling is legal. Sex work is fine.

Drinking until you drop. One of the quotes I read said that it had the best art, best architecture, the strongest business in Asia, dance halls, brothels, glitzy restaurants, international clubs, a race track, and cater to every whim of the rich. So this is like for the wealthy, a great place to be, but for the poor locals, it's racist, it sucks. You know how it is. Sounds like sandals. Exactly like sandals. Oh my God. Nora would have lived in a neighborhood called the Bund inside of the international settlement.

And the Bund was beautiful riverfront real estate lined with opulent buildings. They're all done in the style of the opera house in Paris. That's like the style of design. and when she arrived, she would have been welcomed by quite the roster of black Americans. New Orleans' own Teddy Weatherford had been in Shanghai for nearly a decade at that point and made a small fortune performing and operating a music school. Buck Clayton, a fellow Kansan, headed up a popular jazz band, and the Lady of Snow, nicknamed the Queen of the Trumpet,

who was dazzling and vibrant like Nora and had also been accused of bigamy like Nora, was an absolute sensation from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Black artists enjoyed freedoms in Shanghai. They couldn't have even, definitely you can't imagine them in the U.S., but also other places in the world. And in 1932 at this time, they say that there were more black people living in Shanghai, like more black performers there than in Paris.

Wow. Pays great. Cost of living's low. Opportunities to perform in glamorous places is plentiful, and it's like a great way to spend the Depression. So, everybody's going there. 42-year-old Nora stays in the city for about five years, which is the longest that she'd stayed anywhere up into this point. She's a blues singer now and a hostess. She learns to speak Chinese, and I like to imagine her actually happy here.

The city's home to 70,000 foreigners, and 20,000 of them are Russian. They've been escaping, like, purges and revolutions in their country, and a lot of them are artists. And they joined the Chinese symphonies, and they put on, like, performances. I'm hoping, wishing, praying, like in the movie version of this, they're putting on Chikovsky, which is Nora's favorite. They open these dance schools, and then black people go to them, and they love the way that black people, like, do Russian waltzes and dances and stuff. So there's, like, all this crossover. And also there are black artists who learn to play Chinese music so that they can play in Chinese music. so that they can play in Chinese clubs.

And what they discover is that Chinese folk music is on the same pentatonic scale as the blues and jazz. And so the artists blend the music and create this Chinese folk blues jazz combo and it's so beautiful. It just like works all around her music is being composed in real time.

And this seems to have like some kind of impact on Nora. In 1937, it was a bit of music. becomes clear that a Japanese invasion is imminent and that the world is on the brink of World War II. So they know they have to get out of Shanghai. Black artists are not like excited to go back to America. Teddy Weatherford went to Calcutta, India, where he spent the rest of his life. Buck Clayton did go back to America. He ended up playing trumpet for Count Basie. The lady of snow, against the advice of her friend Josephine Baker, went back to Europe. And then when World War II began, she was imprisoned and Nazi-occupied Denmark.

She's eventually released through a prisoner exchange program. The black press keeps her name in the news, and she does get released and returned to the States, but they said that she was never the same. Oh, that's not sure what to do. She kind of like makes people wait, and then she announces that she is coming back to America. She moves to L.A. She opens a beauty school, becomes a music teacher, enrolls at USC at the age of 47 to study music. She's composing again. Then she settles back in New York and spends the rest of her life

making, promoting, and talking about black artists and classical music. She gets a job as a music critic at the Black-owned Amsterdam News. She writes about black performers and composers like she did back in the day. She finally gets to compose her anthem with her name on it. She co-composes it with Thelma Brown and Langston Hughes. It's called Ethiopia Marches-On. They wrote it for the Ethiopian Resistance. She gets a radio hour with WLIB called Nora Holt's Concert Showcase, and she rejoins the National Association of Negro Musicians, which finally names her their president in 1950. Yes. So this is the last piece I'll say. She enters in and out of black history, I guess, so many

times in the story. But this is how I like to remember her legacy. One of the, you know, she helped any number of countless musicians. She's always publishing their names and accomplishments in her column. But I just want to talk about one. Do you remember way back in the Red Summer of 1919 when Nora started a scholarship for the young singer Marion out of Philly?

Well, thanks to that scholarship and the support of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Marion goes on to become one of the most renowned opera singers in history. As in Marion Anderson? Her name is Marion Anderson. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Way to bury the lead. Excellent story telling. In 1939, Marion held a benefit concert for Howard University on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after other venues turned her away because she's black. Among her many famous first, she becomes the first solo artist of any race to perform there.

75,000 people come out to hear her sing and millions more listen over the radio, including a 10-year-old boy in Atlanta named Martin Luther King, Junior. When he grows up, he'll choose the Lincoln Memorial as the site of his 1963 March on Washington in part because he wanted other people to feel as inspired as he did listening to Marion sing there. Marion will join him at the March on Washington to sing the national anthem and represent for the National Association of Negro Musicians, which she remains a member of for the rest of her life. I hope Nora was there too. I don't know, but I hope she was. Me too.

Nora never marries again, but she does have a lot of dogs. You lost me there. After all that living, Nora passes away in 1974 at the age of somewhere around 89-ish. There's so much more that happens, but for now, that is the story of the woman dubbed the greatest newspaper copy in the world, Nora Holt. Kudos to Nora. Life well-lived. What a story. I'm so happy.

That is legacy upon legacy upon legacy. Act one, act two, act three. American legacy, an international legacy. I feel like she was kind of teetering on the Pan-African movement there when she wrote that song for Ethiopia. And she wrote that song for a nation that was not colonized. Ethiopia was not colonized. The only nation, exactly. So that's the levels of deepness.

It's crazy. And she, for me, going back to this thing about legacy, it's the seeds that you plant. It's not about the thing. The thing, that scholarship and the ripple effect of that one scholarship, right? You change one person's life, who changes the other person's life. And that's where we started the conversation, right? And that's how you, I think most people think of legacy,

not on the grand scale of like this big life, but it's in the small things and those small decisions that really have impact. She created that scholarship on a whim. She didn't think about that. That was not calculated. And look at what happened. That to me is the big one.

And doing the things, even when you're terrified, because I cannot imagine that was an easy life because the threat to your actual life was so ever present. They decided to keep that conference on even right. Right. That's a life or death situation. I wonder how bitter she was or wasn't. Because doing all of that, she struggled through that.

She was exploited by people. She was lied about and she still carried on. So maybe she was. Maybe she was hardened, but she still carried on. I think when you're hardened, you stop, right? Yeah, right. She carried on. Yeah.

She just carried on. I always imagine maybe she was hardened during that New York phase when it seemed like she was just sort of like floating. but then it just seems like Shanghai grounded her. Yeah. But what hope there is for all of us? You might be hardened, but it doesn't mean that you stay hard. It means that if you continue, there's always a way through.

All right, y'all, I really hope you enjoyed this episode and this season. I made it for you. Listen, I would really love to keep in touch. So will you go to our Ancesterswremessi.com and sign up for the newsletter. The link is also in the show notes. I have no idea what's next for the show, but I promise I will keep you posted. Until then, this episode was written and researched and produced by me, Nicole Hill. Thank you to my guests, my insightful and empathetic and patient guests, Natalie Tella, and Christabel and Sia Bwadi.

We recorded for over three hours because we all had so much to say. I loved every minute of it, and I hope you did too. Thank you to the one. Thank you to the only, the OG to know him is to love him, Pat Massidi-Miller for your beautiful sound design with additional incredible music provided by Mela McKetta. I appreciate you both. I don't even know how to thank the people that help me make this show. I'm so grateful for your love and your support.

I hope I did you proud. That's my executive producer, A.A. Hernandez, my story producer, Martina Abraham Zilunga. My research producer and voice talent, Chioki Ayansen, my script editor, Shante Hill, and the designer of my show art, Aselika Smith. If this was Marathon, I am so lucky because I had so many people along the road handing me water and bananas and holding up signs and encouraging me to keep going over the years that it took to make this show. So thank you to Ronald Young Jr., David Gardner, Julek Alantigua, Yo-E Shaw, Caitlin Pierce, Hannah Rosen, Ellen Horn, Cassandra Acefa, Ali LeClair, Siona Petros, Mark Pagan, thank you, Dad.

And mom, thanks for encouraging every single little nerdy storytelling instinct I had and for getting those premium cable packages sometimes so that I could be a weird little middle schooler obsessively watching Turner Classic movies. I think it had an effect. Thank you to the ancestors. Before I go, I just have to say, I'm a storyteller by training, a historian and an archivist through experience, And I started this show in part because when I found these old black newspapers, I was reminded

of this quote by the historian Carl Becker. The value of history is not scientific, but moral. By liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control not society, but ourselves, a much more important thing. Thank you.