{"id":9141,"date":"2021-01-25T02:56:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T02:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/02\/04\/we-grew-up-at-furman\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:37:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:37:40","slug":"we-grew-up-at-furman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/we-grew-up-at-furman\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Grew Up at Furman\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone had called security.<\/p>\n

The reason for the concern? A teenage girl had shown up with her mother, her voice teacher, high school principal, and a member of the Black fraternity Omega Psi Phi. The group had come to support the girl in her crucial moment \u2013 her voice audition before Furman\u2019s music faculty.<\/p>\n

The teen\u2019s name was Sarah Reese, and she had an appointment to be there. But no one was expecting a Black student.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurman had no idea who was coming to dinner,\u201d said Reese, who grew up in rural Pelzer, South Carolina, and graduated from Furman in 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere was this little brown girl who had no idea of the magnitude of this. It means even more to me now than it did then that people had fought for me to have an audition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reese would become a world-famous opera singer, making her New York debut in 1981, and performing with some of the world\u2019s most famous orchestras and conductors, becoming the principal artist with the New York Metropolitan Opera and artist-in-residence at the Opera Company of Boston.<\/p>\n

But first, Reese, in the course of earning her music degree, would do the solitary, heavy work of forging racial progress in Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u2018Some kind of lonely\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reese was one of Furman\u2019s first Black students, her time overlapping with Joseph Vaughn\u2019s, Furman\u2019s first Black undergraduate, after the university desegregated in 1965.<\/p>\n

Reese, Vaughn \u201968 and Lillian Brock Flemming \u201971, another Black student, were \u201cthe three musketeers.\u201d<\/p>\n

But their strong bond was not enough to shield Reese from the stares of white students, the insults from a professor (\u201cnincompoop\u201d), and the refusal of students to room with her after her first roommates \u2013 progressive white students \u2013 had graduated at the end of her first year. Reese and her white roommates had been close, attending Martin Luther King\u2019s funeral together in Georgia, even sleeping on the ground during the trip. After her roommates graduated, however, Reese was left to live in a room alone next to the house mother\u2019s quarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was some kind of lonely when Lillian wasn\u2019t on campus or Joe was busy,\u201d said Reese. \u201cMost of the time, 95% of the time, you\u2019re sitting there alone,\u201d she remembered. \u201cAnd nobody wanted to sit with you. Or they\u2019d kind of sit with you and leer.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was also the \u201cbrick in the hat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCowards,\u201d said Reese, would run by and throw bricks at Reese and the other Black students\u2019 heads in the dark when the friends occasionally gathered in the Rose Garden in the evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose were the times of our society, not just Furman,\u201d said Reese. \u201cIt was a microcosm of our society. At the same time, the education I got from Furman, musically, I could compete with anybody anywhere, and academically.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A special bond<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the moments when she was bent by the weight of the time, it was Vaughn who stood her back up.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe was always there, always,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I said, \u2018I am going to quit, I can\u2019t stand it any longer,\u2019 he\u2019d say, \u2018You have to (stay). You\u2019re not going anywhere.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Vaughn was their big brother, their rock, protector and \u201cpapa.\u201d In 1968, after the Orangeburg Massacre, the three of them demonstrated in downtown Greenville, a march organized by Vaughn, and were stunned after a man tried to run them over with his car.<\/p>\n

On ordinary days, Flemming and Reese would go to football games to cheer on Vaughn, a cheerleader, who made up his own infectious cheer and never hoisted the white female cheerleaders.<\/p>\n

\u2018A luscious voice with dramatic bite\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reese was, simply, a star.<\/p>\n

She was \u201ca young soprano who has it all \u2013 a luscious voice with dramatic bite and astonishing coloratura agility, disarmingly natural musical instincts and a compelling stage presence,\u201d concluded The New York Times in September of 1981.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Reese in \u201cThe Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and The Maiden Fevronia\u201d in April, 1983. Music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Opera Company of Boston production photographs courtesy of Elliot J. Cohen. Photo: Milton Feinberg.<\/p><\/div>\n

Nearly two years later, the Times described her as \u201ca wonderfully pure, sure soprano that seemed to grow in beauty and confidence as the afternoon progressed,\u201d as Fevronia in Rimsky-Korsakov’s \u201cLegend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In November of 1983, the Times said Reese\u2019s role in Puccini\u2019s \u201cTurandot\u201d was \u201cas Puccini envisioned her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover: \u201cHer melodic lines were fluid and supplicatory, but no less assured or compelling in her fine accusatory aria of the final act; earlier, \u2018Signora, ascolta,\u2019 was touchingly compassionate,\u201d continued the Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiss Reese’s performance seemed much larger than its deliberately small-scaled sensitivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was the featured soloist on the 1993 Grammy Award-winning recording, \u201cPrayers of Kierkegaard\u201d with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and made her Carnegie Hall debut with The American Composers Orchestra in 1995. Reese performed roles in Switzerland, England, France, Monte Carlo, Italy and Russia, and traveled to Toulouse, Strasbourg, Dusseldorf and Cologne with the Festival Orchestra of Sofia, Bulgaria, as the soprano soloist in Verdi’s “Requiem” and Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.” She also performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Reese in “La Boheme” by\u00a0Giacomo Puccini\u00a0with Noel Velasco and Lenus Carlson in 1982. Photo: credit: Milton Feinberg;\u00a0Opera Company of Boston production photographs courtesy of Elliot J. Cohen.<\/p><\/div>\n

Homecoming<\/strong><\/p>\n

In her later years, Reese returned to rural South Carolina. She taught music at Pendleton High School and chaired the school’s fine arts department. In 2013, she was named a Yale Distinguished Music Educator, and in 2014, Furman conferred upon her a Doctor of Humanities.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Reese and Flemming attended the homecoming basketball game at the invitation of Furman President Elizabeth Davis. Reese cried when she heard the national anthem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just wept to see so many African Americans joyfully frolicking with other human beings, without duress,\u201d she said. The sight would have been unimaginable when she was a student.<\/p>\n

Today, Reese fills with emotion when she speaks of her experiences at Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Furman. Furman is the reason,\u201d she said. \u201cWe grew up at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: In celebration of Joseph Vaughn Day at Furman University, we are recognizing the experiences of other Black alumni who enrolled soon after the university integrated in 1965.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone had called security. The reason for the concern? A teenage girl had shown up with her mother, her voice teacher, high school principal, and a member of the Black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,60,70,39,76,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-alumni-profiles","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-music","category-top-four-news-3rd-story","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}