“I was the last generation under segregation,” says Elaine Owens, of Pinehurst, who is celebrating 10 years as the pianist/keyboardist for Sandhills Assembly of God in Southern Pines, N.C., a predominately “white church.”
Elaine Marie Browne Owens, 77, an African-American, was born in 1938 in Wheatley-Provident Hospital, “the black Baptist hospital” in Kansas City, Missouri. Founded in 1916, the hospital was reportedly the first medical facility to serve the Black community of Kansas City.
“Most people were
born at home,” says Owens, who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK). “Mother,
who was 30 when I was born, wanted me to be born in the hospital. She taught
kindergarten and first grade and played the piano and sang.”
Owens’ father and
mother were James Harold Browne and Lucille Elaine King Browne.
Rosalyn Anita Browne
Welch, Owens’ only sibling, is three years younger than Owens and lives in the Kansas
City house they grew up in. Rosalyn taught school, went into banking, and then
worked in “corporate America.” She is now retired.
“My parents bought that
house when I was three years old,” Owens says.
Her father worked
for the U.S. Post Office in “railway mail.” He helped prepared the mail and traveled
by train to deliver mailbags to stations. He stayed overnight at homes along
his route.
“We’d go to Union
Station to meet Daddy when he came back from trips,” Owens says.
Her father later worked
for Atlanta Life Insurance Company, a company that insures African-Americans. The
company maintained a branch in Kansas City.
“He sold life
insurance,” Owens says. “And he sang baritone with The Deep River Quartet. They
sang spirituals.”
Her father and 11
other men founded Douglas State Bank in 1947. They were inspired by H.W.
Sewing, an insurance-and-banking entrepreneur from Texas.
Owens maternal grandmother served as a
“matron” over the girls’ dorm at Western University, a historically black
college established in 1865 as the Quindaro Freedman’s School at Quindaro,
Kansas.
According to
“Wikipedia,” Western University was the earliest school for African Americans
west of the Mississippi River and the only one in Kansas. “In the first three
decades of the 20th century, its music school was recognized nationally as one
of the best.” A 1924 fire severely damaged Ward Hall at the school and admissions
declined. Drops in “state appropriations and private funding” led to Western
University’s closure in 1943.
When Owens was three
years old, her grandmother took her to Western University’s “nursery school.”
“I learned how to count,
spell, and read,” Owens says.
------
Her family attended
the First A.M.E. Church (African Methodist Episcopal Church) of KCK, located near
their home. The church sanctuary seated 1100-1200 people.
“One weekend at the
church, Mother set me on her lap at the piano,” Owens says. “I watched her
fingers, and I played right behind her, repeating the notes to the phrase ‘Yes,
Jesus loves me’ from the song ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”
Her parents were
impressed. They had a baby grand piano at home. (“It’s still sitting in that
living room, today,” Owens says. Her sister lives in the home place.)
By age four and a
half, Owens played “harmonies” on the piano. Ms. Van Sant, “from the all-white conservatory,”
visited the Owens home to hear the 4-year-old play. Owens was accepted as a
piano student at the Kansas City, Kansas, Conservatory of Music [now closed but
then located] “on 7th and Washington Blvd.”
“Because I could
read and count, Ms. Van Sant said I could learn to read music,” Owens says, “I
took piano on Saturdays at the conservatory until I was ten or eleven. My first
piano book was John Thompson’s ‘Teaching Little Fingers to Play.’”
(Her music teachers
for both her elementary and secondary school years included these: Dr. Oyarma
Tate, pipe organ; Dr. Duffelmeyer, piano and music theory; Mrs. Cozetta
Kirkland, Hammond organ.)
Owens attended
Douglas Elementary School; her mother taught at Grant Elementary. Her maternal
grandmother walked with Owens for about 3/4 of a block to meet up with Dorothy
Watson, a 4th-grade girl. Dorothy walked with Owens for about more two blocks
to the school.
“Dorothy walked me
home at lunchtime; all of us ate lunch at home,” Owens says. “She went back for
afternoon school, but I didn’t until I got older.”
Owens’ maternal
grandfather, Jefferson Perry King, a Kansas Univ. (KU) graduate, had served as the
first principal of Northeast Jr. High School. The school displayed a photo of
him, along with his motto, “Be the Best,” beneath his photo.
“He had a degree in
chemistry and ran track; he was part native-American,” she says.
Kansas was “more
open than the South” about race relations during her childhood, she notes.
“Where my maternal grandmother
lived, all the neighbors on one side of her house were white, and on the other
side, they were all black,” she says.
Owens’ father was
born in Little Rock, Arkansas. His parents were Phoebe Person Browne and Felix
Browne.
“Felix was ‘mixed
race’ – his mother was black and his father was white,” Owens says. “Grandmother
Phoebe was black. She told me that her parents had once been slaves.”
------
By her second- or
third-grade year, Owens began accompanying soloists on piano. She played for
churches and school activities from her fourth grade year through high school. She
practiced about an hour and a half each day in order to play some operettas,
she says.
------
In 1947, Hazel
Dorothy Scott, a jazz and classical pianist and singer, visited the Owens home
before performing a concert in Kansas City.
Scott, who was
Catholic, had become (in 1945) the second wife of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a
Baptist minister (at Abyssinian Baptist Church) and U.S. Congressman who
represented Harlem, New York City. Powell was the first person of African-American
descent to be elected from New York to Congress.
“She was pretty, and
he was tall and handsome,” Owens says. “She practiced on our piano while Dad
and Rev. Powell talked. She played from Bach to boogie.”
After the famous
couple departed, Owens put on high heels, fashioned a curtain into a long
dress, and played the piano, pretending to be Hazel Scott.
“I wanted to be just
like her!” Owens says. “At her concert, I sat on a pillow so I could see her.”
In 1949, Owens’
family vacationed in New York City for a week.
“Our father and
mother took us to Wall Street and St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” Owens says. “We
stayed downtown and enjoyed restaurants. It was wonderful. In New York City, nobody
cared what color you were.”
On Sunday, the
family visited Abyssinian Baptist Church, located in the Harlem neighborhood of
Manhattan, to hear the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who had invited them to
visit.
“I’d never seen so
many black people in one place,” Owens says. “Rev. Powell would say something,
and people would get excited. He became known for his motto: “Keep the faith,
baby.”
------
Owens was 12 when
she and a cousin, Elizabeth Mason, 13, decided to go to their pastor to confirm
their faith in Christ by joining the church.
“We decided that was
what we wanted to do,” she says. “I had to learn all kinds of things in the
Bible before I was baptized at age 12.”
------
At age 16, Owens began
playing for the Kansas City Meistersingers, a vocal group made up of teachers
and professional people. Some participants were Owens’ schoolteachers. She
played for that group until 1956 when she entered college.
In Sumner High
School, Owens performed as a majorette (3 years), was selected for the National
Honor Society, and participated in school plays.
“I was in ‘Father of
the Bride,’” she says. “I was ‘Mrs. Bellamy’ in the play. I had to ‘blow up’ on
stage. I did it. Had fun.”
------
During her high
school years, Kansas public schools were directed to integrate racially.
“Brown
v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme
Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial
segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision did not succeed in fully
desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on
the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement
into a full revolution.
“In
the early 1950s, NAACP lawyers brought class action lawsuits on behalf of black
schoolchildren and their families in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and
Delaware, seeking court orders to compel school districts to let black students
attend white public schools.
“One
of these class actions, Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the
Topeka, Kansas school board by representative-plaintiff Oliver Brown, parent of
one of the children denied access to Topeka's white schools. Brown claimed that
Topeka's racial segregation violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause
because the city's black and white schools were not equal to each other and
never could be. The federal district court dismissed his claim, ruling that the
segregated public schools were "substantially" equal enough to be
constitutional under the Plessy doctrine. Brown appealed to the Supreme Court, which
consolidated and then reviewed all the school segregation actions together.
Thurgood Marshall, who would in 1967 be appointed the first black justice of
the Court, was chief counsel for the plaintiffs.
“Thanks
to the astute leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court spoke in a
unanimous decision written by Warren himself. The decision held that racial
segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
------
“Kansas didn’t play
around,” Owens says. “That ruling happened in the spring, and the announcement
was made the next day that a student could go to the school of his choice when
school opened in the fall. Four or five whites came to our school; some of them
were football players who lived nearby. We had three high schools in our area.”
Owens graduated in a
class of around 400 students in 1956.
------
“I wanted to go Fisk
University in Tennessee; I had friends there,” she says. “But the Univ. of
Kansas (KU) in Lawrence, Kansas, was only 30 miles up the road.”
She entered KU
during the first year the school integrated the dorms.
“Before that, Negro
students stayed in houses in town, not in the dorm,” she says. “As I moved into
the dorm, I saw limousines driving up, bringing some well-to-do young ladies. My
parents told me, ‘Here’s a check for your tuition and a check for your books,
and here’s $5.00 for you.’”
Owens studied music
education and played keyboard for the university jazz band. She graduated with
a bachelor’s degree in music education in May 1960. (She earned a masters
degree in music education “1966 or ’67.”)
“After college, I worked
for the summer of 1960 in ‘medical records’ at Wheatley Hospital,” she says.
“In September, I began teaching vocal music, English, and civics at Central Jr.
High School.”
In 1968, Owens joined
in a business partnership with Frances Robinson and Leon Brady to open the
“Progressive Music Studio” in KC-K. The three schoolteachers taught music in
their studio, after school hours.
She worked as a
public school teacher from 1960-1974.
------
Owens served – “off
and on,” she says – from 1960-1990 as organist and minister of music for First
A.M.E. Church, KC-K.
“I always kept a
resignation letter in my pocket,” Owens says.
When a minister she “didn’t
relate to” settled in at her church, she often resigned from her positions and
played at churches that invited her to play. After the “minister in question”
moved on, she would return to her church.
During one period, Owens
liked the senior minister at her church, First A.M.E. Church, KC-K, but was
playing a 6-month stint at another church. She also liked “Charles,” the music
director at First A.M.E, but he had an alcohol problem.
She was resting in
bed on a Sunday morning when her phone rang.
“Hello,” she said.
“Charles is in jail;
get over here!” her father’s voice said before he quickly hung up.
“He didn’t even say
‘This is your father,’” Owens says. “He just said, ‘Get over here!’ I started
hurrying, and I called and asked another pianist to fill in for me at the
church where I was scheduled to play. I soon heard the phone ring, again. My
husband answered, and his father said, ‘Get her over here, and you bring Elaine!’
We got ready and flew down the highway. When I got to First A.M.E., they were
holding a robe ready for me to put on, and the choir was ready to walk right in
to the service.”
From 1975-1990, Owens
served as an organist and assisted in music ministry throughout Kansas,
Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska with the Rev. Jimmie Banks, a soloist, and with
Joe Nero, a pianist.
------
Owens met Uriel
Edward Owens in church when he was nine years old and she was eight. Uriel and his family
moved to Kansas from Ashdown, Arkansas, because his father worked on the Sante
Fe Railway.
“Uriel was one of
eight children,” Owens says. “He was child number four. I hated the little
fool. You know how girls and boys are at that age. He was short. I liked his
sister, Virginia, who was eight years old. Uriel was born with sickle cell
anemia but didn’t know it.”
After finishing high
school in 1955, Uriel joined the U.S. Air Force. About six months later, he
“passed out” while flying as a crewman at 10,000 feet. Tests showed he had
sickle cell disease (SCD).
“They rode him out
of the Air Force in one day and gave him money to get home,” Owens says. “He
was in Denver when he got out, and he went to see Rev. Childress, a minister in
Denver. Uriel always thought a lot of Rev. Childress for the counsel and comfort
he gave him at that time.”
Neither Uriel’s family
nor hers had heard of sickle cell anemia, Owens says.
After Owens had taught
school more than two years and Uriel had returned to Kansas and begun work in
the “money order center” for the U.S. Treasury Department in Kansas City,
Missouri, Uriel suggested that their church (First A.M.E. Church of KC-K)
organize a “modern” church choir and sing “new music.” Owens helped organize
that choir. Group members met for practice on Saturdays.
“After practice, we’d
go out to eat as a group,” Owens says. “We’d often eat barbeque.”
------
During 1961, the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce selected Owens’ father and mother as one of six
couples in the U.S. to travel to Switzerland to attend the International Labor
Organization (ILO) convention. The ILO helps establish and oversee
international labor standards and promotes “decent work for all.”
Owens’ father met
President Dwight Eisenhower, who was raised in Kansas, and President Richard
Nixon, who served as U.S. President at the time Owens’ father served as head of
the National Insurance Association and as head of the National Bankers
Association (NBA), formed in 1927 to serve as a “trade
organization for minority and women-owned financial institutions.”
Owens
says her father was a member of one of several groups that helped influence
President Nixon to draw attention to sickle cell disease (SCD). On May 16, 1972, President
Nixon signed into law the National Sickle Cell Anemia
Control Act.
That
“control act” increased funds for screening and for research on the disease.
The act included this statement:
“Sickle cell anemia is an inherited
blood disorder, caused by a genetically determined change in the chemical
constituents of hemoglobin, thus affecting the oxygen-carrying capacity of the
blood. No cure has yet been found.
“This disease is especially pernicious
because it strikes only blacks and no one else. . . .
“Under the programs we have already
initiated, we can look forward to the day when sickle cell anemia will be conquered
as a debilitating menace to many Americans. . . . the bill (S. 2676) is Public Law.”
Owens adds that Senator Bob Dole
of Kansas also helped in obtaining help for SCA research.
------
Owens and Uriel
married in 1962.
Uriel was hesitant about “having
children” because he had SCD. He and Owens underwent tests that showed little
possibility of a child of theirs having SCD.
The couple’s daughter, Erica
Elaine Owens, was born in 1971.
“She is my greatest
accomplishment,” says Owens, who was 33 when her daughter was born. “Erica
played the violin beautifully and was ‘concert mistress’ at her high school.
She played with the Great Kansas City Youth Symphony. That symphony represented
nine counties.”
Before attending college, Erica acted
in inspirational dinner theater productions staged through Joyce Todd
Productions. She graduated form Florida A&M University in “theater arts”
and has worked for years in “information technology.” She lives and works in Metro Atlanta.
------
Prior to his death, Uriel worked
for about seven years as Deputy Director of the Bureau of Child Research for
KU.
“He was an organizer and a
leader,” Owens says. “He helped people with needs and believed everyone needed
opportunity.”
Owens’ father died in 1979, and
many people honored his passing.
Uriel suffered greatly from SCD
during their marriage.
According to the National Heart, Lung
and Blood Institute, “The term sickle cell disease (SCD) describes a group of
inherited red blood cell disorders. People with SCD have abnormal hemoglobin,
called hemoglobin S or sickle hemoglobin, in their red blood cells. Hemoglobin
is a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.”
“The blood can’t get through the veins,” Owens says. “Uriel
went to the hospital many times.”
In Oct.1980, during a hospital
stay, Uriel told Owens, “I hurt from my head to my toes.”
Owens says, “On Sunday, he told
me, ‘Wash the cars.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘Just wash the cars.’ On
Monday at 1:00 p.m., he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Owens’ family gathered on Tuesday.
Uriel was being “kept alive.” Owens asked Uriel’s doctor if he had seen any
change or if he foresaw any change in Uriel. The doctor said, “No.”
“Then let him go,” Owens said.
Uriel was pronounced dead on
Thursday, Oct. 16, at 1:00 a.m. The funeral was held on Oct. 20.
“When he passed, people came
from everywhere to honor him,” Owens says.
------
Before her father died in 1979,
Owens was diagnosed with glaucoma.
“I was the only one in my family
who had it,” she says. “I was not overweight and didn’t have diabetes.”
By 1985, Owens’ regular
physician, Dr. Frances Foster, had become an ophthalmologist in Kansas. After Owens
underwent laser surgery to relieve eye pressure, Dr. Foster, an N.C. native, cried
when she told Owens after the surgery, “I can’t stop this pressure.”
“We were friends,” Owens says.
“I knew her family. She was from Laurinburg, N.C. Some doctors who trained in
the South came to Kansas to make better salaries. And they were more accepted
as ‘people’ in Kansas.”
Owens went through two surgeries
by a specialist.
“Dr. Foster went to surgery with
me, both times. She held my hand while that specialist operated on me,” Owens
says. “My left eye was first. After the operation, I had 12 days of shots – a
steroid shot each day in the eye. Then, 45 days later, the right eye was
operated on. They made a cut over each eye to reduce pressure.”
By 1990, her eye pressures “had
crept up.”
------
Owens had left teaching in 1974 and began work with the U.S. Dept. of Energy. During 1980-81, she started working with the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She left HUD in 1990 at age 52.
“I had to get out because of my eyes,” she says. “I drove to Maryland, and from 1990 to ’94, I lived in an apartment in Baltimore, so I could get eye treatments at John Hopkins Hospital.”
She
lived on funds she had saved and did not apply for disability, hoping she could
return to the workplace and perhaps start a business of some kind. She lived
near Frankie Thomas, a cousin, and various relatives.
“I
didn’t do much piano playing in Maryland,” Owens says. “My doctor had me trying
different medications for my eyes. He’d say, ‘Try this; try that.’”
As
1994 ended, her doctor in Maryland directed her to Dr. Daniel Messner at
Carolina Eye Associates at the Pinehurst/Southern Pines location. Messner
specializes in
the treatment and surgery of glaucoma and cataracts.
Owens
drove south.
“I
didn’t know a soul in Pinehurst,” she says.
She
visited Carolina Eye in Jan. 1995, carrying a huge medical records folder.
“It’ll
take me three days to read that,” Dr. Messner said.
She
needed a complete physical before scheduling surgery.
“They
told me I should not drive because of my eyesight, so I quit driving,” Owens
said. “I was running out of savings, so I applied for disability, and after lots
of paperwork, I was approved for it.”
------
She
met Lisa Thomas, a hairdresser who owns the Aberdeen, N.C., beauty shop now
called “Anointed Creations.” Thomas asked Owens, “Do you want to come to my
church?” That church was FMBC First Missionary Baptist Church in Southern Pines,
N.C.
Owens
asked Thomas if she knew anyone who sold Mary Kay Cosmetics. Thompson told
her of Shuris Campbell, a young speech therapist and Sunday school teacher at FMBC.
Campbell offered to drive Owens to her church.
At
FMBC on the next Sunday, Campbell directed Owens to an older-ladies class where
Owens met Delores Waddell Green.
“We’ll
be singing a song after class,” Green told Owens.
“Well,
I don’t like to sing, but I can play,” Owens said.
She
played piano for the group to sing, and Pastor Joshua J. Haire, Jr., heard her
playing.
“That
was the biggest mistake of my life,” Owens says, smiling.
“Can
you come back tonight and play for us? Pastor Haire asked. “We’ll have someone
pick you up.”
“He
wanted to try me on the organ, to see if I could play,” Owens says. “I love the
‘Hammond B3 and Leslie.’ He plunged me into lots of playing. It’s a very active
church.”
Two
weeks after Owens first visit to First Missionary Baptist, Wanda Campbell,
Shuris Campbell’s aunt, drove Owens to Carolina Eye for Owens’ 6:00 a.m. eye
surgery appointment. (She has undergone six or seven laser surgeries since that
operation.)
“I
stayed in Pinehurst because of Pastor Haire and the surgeries,” she says.
------
Owens
joined FMBC in Southern Pines in 1995 and became the church’s organist and
minister of music. She relinquished the minister-of-music title to Damon Clark
in 2005. The Rev. Bryan Rainbow, then-pastor of Sandhills Assembly of God in
Southern Pines, needed a keyboardist and called Pastor Haire, his friend.
“They
need somebody on keyboards,” Haire told Owens. “Go for a few weeks or months
until Brother Bryan can hire someone. Go help my friend.”
“I
liked the people at Sandhills Assembly,” Owens says. “I started playing there
on the second Sunday of July 2005. They’d come to pick me up. They had Jim
Muccio on drums and Chuck Richardson on guitar. Pastor Bryan sang solos at
various places outside the church. He’d call me and say, ‘Ms. Elaine, I need to
sing at such-and-such a place, can you go with me and play for me?’”
Jim
Muccio, an accomplished trumpet player and former band teacher at Pinecrest
High School in Pinehurst, N.C., now lives in Florida with his wife, Lucy. He says about Owens, “Elaine
is one of the finest musicians that I have had the pleasure of playing with.
Her years of practice and her faith are both evident each time she touches the
piano keys. She's a wonderful person, who is always willing to go the
extra mile to help those in need.”
Owens
still plays for Sandhills Assembly. Pastor Ty Van-Thomas of Sandhills Assembly
appreciates her skill, as does Ms. Kendra Marshall, the church’s newly
appointed worship leader.
Pastor Van-Thomas says, “Elaine, in her own
right, is not only a legend – whose musical skills and talents continue to be a
channel of strength, hope, and encouragement to the Body of Christ! – “but,
I’ve also been privileged to witness her gifted ability to arrest the most
vital moment in a service with a musical flow that interprets the Holy Spirit’s
message of the hour. That flow is what captivates the hearts and minds of God’s
people and facilitates a move of His Spirit, requiring those who are present to
respond.”
Owens
stayed on as the keyboardist for Sandhills Assembly while remaining active at
FMBC.
“Sitting
around does not ‘get it’ for me,” Owens says. “First Missionary Baptist Church
has done a lot and done a lot of ministry with other groups.”
Pastor
Haire founded “The Creative Learning Center” in 1996. L’Tanya Haire, the
pastor’s wife, Pastor Haire and Owens are charter members of that center.
“I’m
still an active board member,” Owens says.
She
solicited instruments for FMBC and asked music groups to visit the church.
“I
met with Benny Edwards at First Baptist Church [a predominately white church]
in Southern Pines,” she says. “We combined our choirs to sing ‘Total Praise’ by
Richard Smallwood.”
Each
third-Sunday night, Owens now plays for “a singing” at Liberty Christian Church
in Aberdeen.
“Jeff
and Sandra Miller used to attend Sandhills Assembly but now go to Liberty
Christian,” Owens says. “They’re good singers. They pick me up for that
service.”
------
Owens
says she maintains a morning ritual of reading Proverbs 3:5-6 from the Bible,
though she knows by memory the words she reads.
Here
are those Bible verses: “Trust in the Lord
with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In
all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
“That’s
the first thing I read every morning when I get up,” she says. “I want the Lord
to direct my paths.”
###
This story was written by Larry
Steve Crain of Southern Pines, N.C. Find more of his stories at:
