Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing: A Call for Justice
Harry T. Burleigh As some of you already know, I have recently signed a contract with a publisher for the release of my first book of memoirs. Also, as I wrote in my last blog, I was recently asked to participate in a panel discussion presented by the Harry T. Burleigh Society during its conference titled "More Than the Promise of the American Myth: Rethinking Burleigh & (Ella) Sheppard in the Second Gilded Age." Other participants on the panel included the descendants of composers Harry Burleigh , Ella Sheppard , W.C. Handy , J. Rosamond Johnson , and Bob Cole . The Fisk Jubilee Singers - whose concert the Burleigh Society presented the night before at Carnegie Hall - had included my father's arrangement of the spiritual "Steal Away" on their program. So it seemed fitting to include me in a conversation on the handling of copyrights and the preservation of historic recordings, as I had produced a documentary film on my father's life along with i...