User:ElsieCinque/sandbox

This is Elsie Cinque's sandbox, for creating drafts and amendments to existing articles.

Amend: Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent

Amend: Dorothy Mae Taylor

Amend: Senga Nengudi

Create: Reber Simpkins Cann

Create: Mary Morehead Richardson

Main descripton:

KEEP: Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent (May 19, 1904 – March 10, 2001) was an American pianist, music educator, and community leader. She was the wife of Dillard University president Albert W. Dent, and the mother of poet and activist Thomas Dent.

AMEND: Early life and education:

Ernestine Jessie Covington was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Benjamin Jesse Covington and Jennie Belle Murphy Covington. Her father was a medical doctor; both of her parents were college graduates, and known to be musical. As prominent African-Americans in Houston, the Covingtons hosted house guests including Marian Anderson and Booker T. Washington.

Covington began studying music as a little girl; piano with Madame Corilla Rochon, a neighbor, and violin with Willie Nickerson, brother of Camille Nickerson LINK: Camille Nickerson. FOOTNOTE: Dent Family papers addendum, 116-01. Amistad Research Center. https://amistad-finding-aids.tulane.edu/repositories/2/resources/350 Accessed June 03, 2021. By the time she was a teenager, she was playing music in a local women's orchestra and at Baptist church services.

Covington graduated at the top of her class from Houston Colored High School, and attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music as a music student from 1920 to 1924. After graduating from Oberlin, she pursued further studies on scholarships at the Juilliard Musical Foundation, where she worked with James Friskin and Olga Samaroff. She earned a master's degree in piano at Oberlin College in 1934, with support from the Rosenwald Fund.