Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent
*Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent was born on May 19, 1904. She was a Black pianist, music educator, and community leader.
Ernestine Jessie Covington was born in Houston, Texas, and was the daughter of Benjamin Jesse Covington and Jennie Belle Murphy Covington. Her father was a medical doctor; both of her parents were college graduates and known to be musical. As prominent Blacks in Houston, the Covington's hosted house guests, including Marian Anderson and Booker T. Washington. Covington began studying piano and violin as a little girl with Madame Corilla Rochon, a neighbor. As a teenager, she played music in a local women's orchestra and Baptist church services.
Covington graduated at the top of her class from Houston Colored High School and attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music as a music student from 1920 to 1924, where Covington was a charter member of the Pi Kappa Lambda honor society. After graduating from Oberlin, she pursued further studies on scholarships at the Juilliard Musical Foundation, where she worked with James Friskin and Olga Samaroff. Covington was the first Black and the first woman to attend Juilliard. She earned a master's degree in piano at Oberlin College in 1934, with a thesis on the compositions of Franz Liszt. Dent accomplished this with support from the Rosenwald Fund.
Dent played piano in recitals and on radio in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1931, she married college president Albert W. Dent in a "brilliant wedding" in Houston. Camille Nickerson played the organ at the ceremony, and Manet Harrison Fowler was a soprano soloist; biologist Samuel M. Nabrit stood as Dent's best man. They had three sons, one of whom was poet and activist Thomas Dent.
In the 1940's, she performed with opera singer Florence Cole Talbert. She taught music in Houston and at Bishop College, where she chaired the piano department. She served on the board of the New Orleans Philharmonic from 1971–1976. Dent played a vital role in the desegregation of orchestra concerts in New Orleans, and she encouraged the increase of classical musicians of color in symphony orchestras and teaching positions. In 1985, she was the first recipient of the Fine Arts Award from the Amistad Research Center.
Dent retired from performing in 1936 but remained active as a club woman and was a social presence as a university president's wife from 1941 to 1969. As official hostess at Dillard University, she welcomed prominent guests into her home, including Martin Luther King Jr., Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Dent was a founding member of the Flint-Goodridge Hospital Women's Auxiliary and the New Orleans chapter of the historically black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.
She inspired the creation of the Ebony Fashion Fair, a touring event that raised funds for college scholarships and other charities. Ernestine Covington Dent died on March 10, 2001, at 96. The Albert and Jessie Covington Dent Papers are archived in the Amistad Research Center. A Jessie Covington Dent Music Festival in 1998 and a Jessie Covington Dent Memorial Scholarship in Music, both at Dillard University, were named in her memory.
