Nora Holt

Kansan Nora Holt was the first African American woman to earn a master's degree in music. She received the degree in 1918 from the Chicago Musical College.

Born Lena Douglas in 1895 in Kansas City, Holt learned to play piano at the age of four and went on to play organ for the local A.M.E. church. She graduated as class valedictorian in 1917 with a bachelor's degree in music from Western University in Quindaro in Wyandotte County. She went on to earn her master's degree from the Chicago Musical College. She studied music education at the University of Southern California in the late 1930s.

She took the last name of her fourth husband, George Holt, in 1916 and changed her first name to Nora. Holt developed a love for classical music and co-founded the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1919. She moved to New York and became an important part of the Harlem Renaissance. She performed in Europe and studied voice with a Parisian teacher. She taught music in Los Angeles in the 1930s and was a columnist in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. She hosted a radio show on WLIB in New York, which ran from the 1950s and 1960s. Holt died January 25, 1974 in Los Angeles, California.