Perry, Julia A.

Perry was born in Lexington, KY, one of the five daughters of Dr. Abe Perry and America Lois Heath Perry. The family moved to Akron, Ohio, when Julia was a child. She was a two-time graduate of Westminster Choir College [now Westminster Choir College of Rider University]. She received two Guggenheim fellowships and a number of other awards during her career. Perry composed many works, including two one-act operas and a three-act opera-ballet, The Selfish Giant (published in 1964), for which she won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize. She taught in the music department at Hampton Institute [now Hampton University] and at Florida A&M, and she was a visiting lecturer at Atlanta University Center [now Clark Atlanta University]. Perry's career began to decline when she suffered her first stroke at the age of 46. She is buried in the Glendale Cemetery in Akron; the birth date on her tombstone, 1927, is incorrect. For more see "Julia Perry" in From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American women composers and their music, by H. Walker-Hill; Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Classical Musicians, by N. Slonimsky; and Black Women in America. an historical encyclopedia, ed. by D. C. Hine.