Nora Holt: The Lives and Loves of Harlem's Legendary Blonde Bombshell

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 Nichole Hill, Natalie Tulloch, and Christabel Nsiah-Buadi. https://yourpodcastpipeline.com/about-christabel This incredible story comes to us from Our Ancestors Were Messy https://thesecretadventuresofblackpeople.com/, a show about our ancestors and all their drama. It dives into the gossip, scandals, and pop culture that made headlines and then history in pre-Civil Rights Era America. Host Nichole Hill takes her guests through the story of an ancestor in search of opportunity, adventure, love, and a way to beat Jim Crow. Along the way, these ancestors make messes that land them in the gossip columns of Black newspapers. Listen to Our Ancestors Were Messy https://thesecretadventuresofblackpeople.com/ on any podcast platform! Or follow along on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ourancestorsweremessy/, TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@our.ancestors.were.messy, or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@OurAncestorsWereMessy. This story was written and produced by Nichole Hill. Sound design by Pat Mesiti-Miller with additional music by Mellat Makeda. Season 17 - Episode 15 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 1:21Speaker 01

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• 1:53Glynn Washington?

  Okay, I'm walking down the street. I'm minding my own business. And the two women behind me, they're gossiping about people I do not know. But it's crazy interesting, right? So, maybe I do slow down a little bit to listen in better. And the woman says, "Ah..." Should we talk louder? So you can... Mind our business better?

• 2:17Glynn Washington?

  Oops. Caught. I couldn't help myself. It's too juicy, too scandalous. In the show, our ancestors were messy. It's kind of like that. It's sneaky. It lets you listen into the gossip, the scandals of pop culture, but back in time, stories that made headlines in pre-civil rights era America. The host, Nicole Hill, she takes us inside the lives of real people. Inside their loves, betrayals, twists, turns, all as they struggled to beat Jim Crow and the messes. This is not amateur hour. You gotta step into some real devilment to land in the gossip columns of those black newspapers.

• 3:00Glynn Washington?

  And it makes you think someday, people are gonna be scouring the names of people at the center of pop culture, right here and now, and ask, who is that? What? You ain't never heard of Prince? You never heard of Whitney? How is that even possible? But time comes for all of our heroes. And such is the case for today's story. Today, we're gonna go back in time to learn the history of one of the most incredible music composers of her time. Nicole sits down with a couple of guests to explore the archives. Nicole Hill, take it away.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  This is the story of the woman dubbed the greatest newspaper copy in the world, Nora Holt.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  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 in church, and by her teens, 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 sets out to do that, at the age of 15, she gets married to a man named Sky James. I couldn't find any information about Sky, except for that he's a musician.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Moving on. I was gonna 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 our Lena 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, yeah, same stuff. Exactly what Lena says. But this is, this teacher is insistent, like, if we're gonna use this theme song, or if we're gonna 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 Lena.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  So I if she's such an argumentative person, I'm like, OK, I'm thinking she also has aspirations to do big things. So I can also see her, well, not backing down, but negotiating. OK, I can give you a little bit of credit, but my name comes first or something. Mm hmm. Right? 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.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. I think it was bold that she divorced because I'm 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.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  All right, let me tell you what she does. OK. She tears the song up. Oh. She did what? She tears the song up, destroys it. Wow. She is not OK with not getting credit for her work. Wow. Like, start over, go write your own song. Good luck. Exactly. Wow.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Mofo is what she says.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  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 composer Tchaikovsky, 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." Hmm, wow. She falls in forever love with the opera, with Tchaikovsky and Russian symphonies,

• 7:56Speaker 02

  but out of love with husband number two, Philip Scroggins, and at 18, they divorce, and shortly thereafter, she marries Bruce Jones. I couldn't find any information about him, except that he was a barber.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  His name Bruce?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Bruce Jones.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Bruce the barber, Bruce Jones the barber.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Bruce the barber.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  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.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Clearly. So, yeah, these marriage choices, I don't know, man.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Lena graduates valedictorian of Western University.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Of course she does.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  And then about 10 years pass, seemingly uneventfully, until we arrive in 1917. So now she's around 28 and she's decided to pursue her masters at Chicago Musical College.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  She packs her bags, she kisses her life in Kansas goodbye, including husband number three. Look at your face, as you already know.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  We already did that. Yeah, exactly. At this stage, it's a trend, right? Three trends.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  You already know. She kisses husband number three goodbye and makes her way to Chicago. In Chicago, Lena is writing more compositions 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.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  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?

• 9:59Speaker 03

  "My man rocks me with one steady roll. There is no slipping. When he wants, he takes hold." Is that meant to say, "Once it takes hold"?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know how, but that's what it says, yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  "I looks at the clock and the clock struck one. I said, 'Now daddy.' We got fun. He kept rocking with one steady roll." That's a yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  And the clock keeps, the clock keeps rocking until like six or seven, six, six or seven, something like that. So.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  With one steady roll?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, sure does. So, we're not in Kansas anymore.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  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?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Does she tear it up?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  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 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. He is a very wealthy man. Somehow, he and Lena meet, and eventually, they travel to Michigan, and they elope. Lena, she seems quite taken with George's ability to reinvent himself.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  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 she 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 Race Woman. Wow.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Lynching 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. Uh huh. I'm confused, so confused. The logic isn't logic in right here now.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  At all.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  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 apologize and black women call it, quote, their shot heard around the world. So the ladies here 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.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  So they believe, 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 crew that Nora has decided she wants to run with.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Nah, that ain't gonna work. It's still gonna work.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Bite day one. First meeting from the notes. Nora stormed out.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Stormed out.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  This is what she's, this is what she's picked. She's like, I can ride with these women. So here we go. Nora, let's see.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Good luck, good luck.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  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. Huge. Yep, 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 on page five?

• 15:08Speaker 03

  It's mine.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  She got the respectability, respectability.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Do you realize what a tremendous moral weapon the Negro holds by virtue of his 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 bullsh-

• 15:35Speaker 02

  You can play the most beautiful music, you can sing the most beautiful songs, 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, her readers, like somewhere around at its 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

• 16:19Speaker 02

  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 movements and the symphony and the orchestra, 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, no, no, no, we're going to the symphony.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  I love going to the symphony.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  She's very excited about her idea, though. I want to give her grace because we're not there, and I can get, 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, and-

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  It never happens.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  No, it never happens, because, yeah, go ahead. I'm vexed, that's why I was interrupting.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  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, if you give us the opportunity to read and write, we will see, show you that we're just as brilliant, I get that, and-

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Then they'll like us, too.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  But no one, but no one's gonna like you if they don't want to like you.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Right. Nora wants to create change, not just through music, black classical music. She really hates jazz, which she feels is debaucherous and not advancing the cause of freedom. She calls it one of America's terrible creations, on par with prohibition and the KKK.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  What happened to her?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Zora, this is where--

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Is that, is that old man?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Zora, this is where we break up.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was that old man she married? What's she, what's she talking about?

• 18:00Speaker 02

  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 this 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 29th, 1919. This will be her greatest achievement as a race woman.

• 18:38Glynn Washington?

  The Platinum Blonde episode from Our Ancestors Were Messy continues right after this short break. Snap us. Say.

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• 20:01Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the platinum blonde episode from our ancestors were messy already in progress.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  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.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  As they do.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  As they do, because that makes sense. And finally.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  I like it also sounds, well, it's too soon. Still too soon. It sounds way too.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Triggered. Everybody's triggered.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  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 W. E. B. 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,

• 21:44Speaker 02

  but like people who seem nice, and find this adds to the terrorism, people who seem chill, join mobs.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  I refer to my previous comment, too soon.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  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 27, 1919, just two days before the National Association for Negro Musicians Conference is set to begin. Nora is probably running all over town. Meanwhile, a 17-year-old named Eugene Williams and his friends decide to go hang out at the beach at Lake Michigan, along with tons of other 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.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  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. Oh, no. 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 OK 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

• 23:22Speaker 02

  arrive for the first-ever National Association for Negro Musicians Conference. Nora 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. She asks 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,

• 24:05Speaker 02

  that summer, veterans in DC 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 Guard unit, the 8th Illinois Regiment, known as the Fighting 8th. And they see this, 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 US National Guard arrives in Chicago. The official death count is reported to be 38 people,

• 24:48Speaker 02

  23 black 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.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  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 in 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.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  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.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  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 name Nora their VP. The VP? They choose that music teacher. The VP, you said? The VP, I said, yeah. They chose that teacher from DC, uh huh, and he's going to be their president.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Black women are always too much. Too much. Nora's devastated. She came up with the idea. With the idea. She led. Landed. Executed. And then he. Okay. See? 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.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  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 to another man? I don't know. She's getting married, you already know. And this one is a royal affair. Husband number five, Joseph Ray. 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.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  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 prom- 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

• 28:47Speaker 02

  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. There's no mention of her going to hear her beloved Tchaikovsky 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.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Nora 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? She loves jazz. Right.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  On some nights at these 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 in nothing at all.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  What happened to her?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Oh my god. But now she's married.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  If Joseph knew anything about Nora's Harlem nights, he probably figured they were behind her now. After their wedding, 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 US Steel Corp., the gift of Joseph Al Ray to his charming bride. That is a nice gift. 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.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  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 after their whirlwind honeymoon, Nora and Joseph returned home to his lavish accommodations in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, headquarters of, this is where Schwab's Steel Empire is located. 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 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?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  She's like, Joseph, why don't you buy me an apartment in 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 weekends. 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.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And then she hops on a 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 her 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. And he was over it. Ooh. I'm just perplexed though, because I'm 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?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  And really wanted it to work? But if you look miserable at the wedding, like be a runaway bride. Bolt, get out of there. Like, maybe you thought it was a good idea at the time. Maybe now you're like, wait, I 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 P I. is on her tail. She arrives in the city. The P I. follows her to an upscale rooming house in Harlem, which is like a fancy Airbnb. Nora, I imagine disappears inside. The P I. hangs back. He spots a maid and he pulls her aside. He says, you know this lady? And the maid spills everything.

• 34:08Glynn Washington?

  When Snap returns, a scandal, a scandal. When the Platinum Blonde episode continues, stay tuned.

• 34:38Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. The Platinum Blonde episode from our ancestors were messy. When last we left, our all-star composer returns to Harlem. But little did she know, a private eye was watching her every move, looking for a scandal. And a scandal they did find. The type of scandal that makes headlines.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Early Wednesday morning, private detectives 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 for 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?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, "My Daddy Rocked Me."

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, he rocked me. So what I said. Anyway, the hour was around 4:30 in the morning, 4:30 in the morning. Anyway, a fistfight between attorney William L. Patterson and one of the detectives took place soon after an entrance was made into the room.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Wow. Now Joseph Ray, husband number five, has all he needs to get his divorce. Joseph, the thing that he's mainly trying to fight is that he'd made her this promise that 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, seemingly. Either way, it's legal, so the point goes to Nora. Joseph, who the papers report as

• 36:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Ears were pricked and necks 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, you liar?

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Please, sorry. And also, you are a grown ass man. You can say no. You think you're doing her a favor? And also, if you think she's a thief, you say no. Say no!

• 37:50Speaker 03

  So now you look dumb. Please continue.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Nora is called to the stand.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  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 receipts!

• 38:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  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. 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. Mrs. Ray denied that she had been accused of the larceny of jewelry from the Ray home, but admitted that she had been the recipient of many valuable presents from Mr. Ray.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  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.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Wow. That's a That's a lot. That's a lot of secrets and lies. I'm telling you, man, some shady, shonky business. Yeah. So what was the deal?

• 39:40Speaker 02

  She's just saying, we met back in the day. I was like, no, thank you. I'm already married. She marries George Holt.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  So he was pursuing her?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Pursuing her.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  All this time?

• 39:48Speaker 02

  All this time.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  All this time?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. 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.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Remember, we couldn't figure out why she was so sad. She never cared for him that way.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  She didn't want to.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Pursued. She was like, oh, okay, let me give it a try. But her heart wasn't in it.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  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.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Can't put her in a cage. She cannot be good.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Come on now.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  She gave you a pity yes.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  This is what happens when you take a pity yes.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Do what you ask for.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  See, never do a pity yes. Never do pity sex, pity date, pity anything.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  You'll regret it. Listeners, you'll regret it.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Joseph Ray and his attorneys give comments readily to the press, but Nora remains silent. Nora at first believes that 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 drama of it. It's in every paper. It's just published again and again.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  So they turned her into a, basically they turned her into a loose woman. I'll say it. They turned her into a whore.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. So it's actually not good for her. And she decides like, I am gonna have to leave town until this divorce gets settled. So she rents a storage space and she stores her possessions there, 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

• 41:28Speaker 03

  As you do.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  She buys a one-way ticket out of town.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Nora decides to tour Europe. While the details of her divorce settlement are being battled in court, she does residencies where she sings jazz and glamorous nightclubs in London, Monte Carlo, Berlin, Paris. Yes. Everywhere she goes, crowds go wild. They think 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?

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Not even ready.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Is it yours? Can I touch it? Oh, my God. It's so true.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  There's an Associated Negro Press with correspondents 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.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  It's the story world over. You get vilified in the place you're from, you leave, and then everyone goes, you're amazing.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  We love you. We love you.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Nora's called back to the US tons of times for this court, you know, 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.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  OK.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  I can deal with that.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  That's fine. She hasn't lost. Yeah, she hasn't lost.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're like, OK, OK, we'll take that. We'll take that.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  That's fine.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  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.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  So somebody knew that it was there and that it was valuable.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  It seems like it, I don't know. They, I mean, they may have stolen other things, I don't know. But they always say the thing that they, the only thing that anybody ever talks about is the fact that they stole those compositions. Her life.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  So we could be listening to her music right now and we don't know.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  We wouldn't even know it. Mm hmm. 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.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  So in 1932, Shanghai was a fishing village turned financial hub and the fifth largest city in the world. The US and Britain had set up what was called like the international settlement, which is basically like here, you know, we have Chinatowns. There, this is like America Town, Britain Town, 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 till 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 racetrack, and catered to every whim of the rich.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  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.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Sounds like sandals.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Exactly like sandals.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Nora would have lived in a neighborhood called The Bund, inside of the international settlement. 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.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Black artists enjoyed freedoms in Shanghai. They couldn't have even, definitely you can't imagine them in the US, but also other places in the world. And in 1922 at this time, they say that there were more black people living in Shanghai, like more black performers there than in Paris. Wow. The city's home to 70,000 foreigners. A lot of them are artists. And there are black artists who learn to play 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.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  It just like works all around. Her music is being composed in real time. Forty-two-year-old Nora stays in the city for about five years, which is the longest that she'd stayed anywhere up until 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.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  In 1937, it 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. So Nora'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 LA. 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,

• 47:49Speaker 02

  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.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Way to bury the lead.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Excellent storytelling.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. 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 firsts, 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 Jr. 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

• 49:47Speaker 02

  for the National Association of Negro Musicians, which she remains a member of for the rest of her life.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  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.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Kudo to Mora, life well lived.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  What a story. I'm so happy.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  That is legacy upon legacy upon legacy.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Upon legacy.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  American legacy and international legacy. Like, I feel like she was kind of teetering on the Pan-African movement there when she wrote that song for Ethiopia. Like, she-

• 50:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. And she wrote that song for a nation that was not colonized.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Ethiopia was not colonized, the only nation. Exactly. The levels of deepness, it's crazy. For me, going back to this thing about legacy, it's the seeds that you plant. It's not about the thing.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  That, the thing that scholarship and the ripple effect of that one scholarship, right? It changed one person's life, who changes the other person's life. And it's, 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. And doing the things, even, 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.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  I wonder how bitter she was or wasn't.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  Because doing all of that, she struggled through that. She was, she was exploited by people. She was lied about. And she still carried on. 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.

• 52:23Glynn Washington?

  To hear the full version of this episode and so much more, check out Our Ancestors for Messy on any podcast platform. With sound design by Pat Mesiti Miller, traditional music by Mela Veketa. The guests were Natalie Tella and Christabel Insea Boydi. The story was written and produced by Nicole Hill. If you missed even a moment, you can listen to Snap anytime, anywhere, on any podcast platform, and this is not the news. No way this is the news. In fact, you can discover that nice, chaste little old lady next to you has a wilder past than you could possibly have imagined, and you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.