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Marie
("Selika") Williams. Library of Congress
President Ulysses S. Grant was once said to have
known "only two tunes. One is ‘Yankee
Doodle,’ and the other isn’t." But
the great military hero of the Civil War, General
Grant did, in fact, enjoy the music of the Marine
Band, which gave concerts regularly on the White
House grounds every Saturday during summer and early
fall. As America’s musical life escalated throughout
the nation, Grant’s successor, Rutherford B.
Hayes, brought to the White House at least twenty-five
different opera singers, instrumentalists, and choral
groups that represented the finest in American cultural
tastes of the latter part of the century. One of
the most outstanding programs of the Hayes period
was the performance in the Green Room of the brilliant
young coloratura soprano, Marie Selika, who appears
to be the earliest black artist to have presented
a program at the White House. Selika had toured
Europe and had sung for several crowned heads of
state. With such fine programs as this, President
and Mrs. Rutherford Hayes inaugurated the musicale
tradition that exists in the White House today.
Elise
Kirk, Musical Highlights from the White House,
52-59.
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