Ruby's
Birth and Childhood:
"I Know the Lord" |
Ruby
Elzy was born February 20, 1908, the first child of
Charles and Emma Elzy, in the small Mississippi town
of Pontotoc. Her mother, Emma, known as “Mama”
Elzy, was a devout Methodist and supported herself and
her four children by teaching, picking cotton, and washing
and ironing for some well-to-do white families in Pontotoc.
While she folded the laundry, Ruby learned spirituals
from her great grandmother, Fannie.
Ruby
sang in public for the first time when she was four,
on a 
spring Sunday at the McDonald Methodist Church in Pontotoc,
Mississippi. “The choir had just finished
the morning anthem and was beginning to sing a hymn
when suddenly a child’s voice rose over all the
others. It was little Ruby, singing her heart out from
the front pew" (p. 9). The worshipers’
amusement turned to amazement at the lovely young voice,
and they erupted with “Hallelujahs!” at
the end of her song.
Educational
opportunities weren’t easy for Ruby to find in
the racially segregated South. She attended the one-room
Pontotoc Colored School, which ended with the fifth
grade. When Ruby finished in 1919, the only place she
could continue her education was Rust College, 60 miles
north of Pontotoc. Though the school required tuition
and students had to be 15 years of age to enroll, Emma
Elzy convinced the school officials to admit her gifted
11-year-old on a work scholarship.
 Ruby
grew into a popular, beautiful young woman at Rust College,
where her nickname was “Rube,” and she was
“most noted for making eyes.” After graduating
from Rust’s high school in 1926, Ruby entered
the college bachelor’s program. Rust’s award-winning
music program was not yet established, and Dr. McCoy,
the school’s president and Ruby’s mentor,
worried that she might never get the opportunities she
deserved.
In
May 1927, Dr. Charles C. McCracken of The Ohio State
University traveled to Rust as part of a committee to
study Negro schools and colleges of the South. Ruby
was rehearsing for a school concert during the committee’s
meeting, and her voice traveled in through the open
windows on that warm afternoon. Distracted, the committee
went to hear Ruby sing. McCracken was so impressed that
he summoned her to sing for him again the next day.
He decided to bring Ruby to Ohio State. Although she
was traveling away from the “Jim Crow” laws
to the North, Ruby had to pose as a maid to Rust College’s
white headmistress in order to ride the Pullman car
to Ohio. In a few years, however, Ruby would return
to her hometown as a star.
Concurrent
Noteworthy Events
1908
•
Born
the same year as Ruby: dancer, choreographer and teacher
Jose Limon; future U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson;
French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir; French
composer Olivier Messiaen.
•
Jack Johnson becomes first black world heavyweight boxing
champion.
•
The Ford motor company produces the first Model “T.”
1912
• Premiers the same year as Ruby’s: Vaslav
Nijinsky’s first ballet, L’Apres-midi
d’un faune; Mahler’s Symphony No. 9
in D; Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat
major; Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra,
Op. 16.
• The SS Titanic sinks this year.
1917
• The United States enters World War I.
1919
• This year marks the tentative beginning of the
Harlem Renaissance in New York City, where Ruby would
eventually live.
•
Prohibition becomes law in the 18th amendment to the
U.S. Constitution.
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