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These minutes from the New England Conservatory, in the penultimate paragraph, describe a letter from President Kennedy that was also received by Peabody. While the original letter could not be found at Peabody, the resulting correspondence is…

In June of 1963, Conservatory Director Charles Kent received this letter from the Maryland Commission on Interracial Problems and Relations. It congratulated him on a recent decision to remove racial indicators from Peabody applications.

The same week that Brown v. Board of Education was decided, Kenneth Hjelmervik, Director of Music Education in the Baltimore Public Schools, wrote to Virginia Carty asking for help accommodating several African-American students in need of a teacher.…

Although the Conservatory had accepted Paul Brent as the first African-American student to officially enroll at Peabody in 1949, the Preparatory still did not accept black students. In 1951, when they were considering neighborhoods for new branches,…

In this letter, Conservatory Dean Virginia Carty asks Institute President William Marbury what to do if African-American students apply to the Peabody Summer School.