A Musical Interruption in Hover
An account of a brief performance by two Black entertainers at a local schoolhouse, filtered through the era's jarring racial language.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Friday, shortly after recess, in the afternoon, two Black folks entered the school room and shortly all three rooms were united. The woman seated herself at the piano and the man accompanied her with his banjo. They played several pieces and then invited the entire school to sing with them. After fifteen minutes the performers departed, after being brought back twice by the frantic clapping of hands. The entertainers were Mr. and Mrs. Cox.
“After fifteen minutes the performers departed, after being brought back twice by the frantic clapping of hands.”
This brief snippet captures a fleeting, positive interaction between local schoolchildren and two Black performers in a rural schoolhouse in 1914. While the report uses the dehumanizing language common to newspapers of that era, the actual event described is one of communal music-making—a rare, documented instance of Black presence in the early history of Benton County.
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