The HistoryMakers video oral history with Blanche Burton-Lyles.

Chicago, Illinois : The HistoryMakers, [2016]

1 online resource (5 video files (2 hr., 23 min., 38 sec.)) : sound, color.

Access is available to the Yale community.

Videographer, Neculai Burghelea.

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

Cultural heritage chief executive and pianist Blanche Burton-Lyles was born March 2, 1933, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. degree in music from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1954; and her B.A. degree in music education from Temple University in 1971. Burton-Lyles was a child prodigy; she won the Young Audiences Competition in 1947 and was the first African-American female pianist to play at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic. She attended the same church as Marian Anderson, who became Burton-Lyles' mentor. She performed with the New Haven Symphony and, for fifteen years, with Leroy Bostic and the Mellow Aires. In 1963, she joined the Philadelphia Board of Education as a teacher while Burton-Lyles retired from teaching in 1993, and became the founder and President of the Marian Anderson Historical Society, Inc. Burton-Lyles received the Mary McLeod Bethune Award from the National Council of Negro Women in 2000.

Images / Online / Video & Film

English

February 04, 2021

Videographer, Neculai Burghelea.

Shawn Wilson, interviewer.