Jeffrey Green
by chrismoffat
Affiliation: Independent Historian
Location: South of London
Contact: jeffnsue@eastgrin.fsnet.co.uk
Research Description: Victorian Britain with an emphasis on Americans.
Research Keywords: Fugitive slaves, African Americans, Slavery Narratives, Jubilee Singers, Temperance.
Countries and Regions of Interest: British Isles (Britain and Ireland)
Publications:
BOOKS
Edmund Thornton Jenkins: the Life and Times of an American Black Composer 1894-1926 (Greenwood Press, 1982).
Black Edwardians. Black People in Britain 1901-1914 (Frank Cass, 1998).
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life (Pickering and Chatto, 2011).
Coleridge-Taylor, a Centenary Celebration (History and Social Action Publications, 2012).
CONTRIBUTIONS IN COLLECTIONS
‘Thomas Lewis Johnson (1836-1921): the Bournemouth Evangelist’; ‘George William Christian (1872-1924): Liverpool Merchant’; ‘Dr J. J. Brown of Hackney (1882-1953)’, published in Rainer Lotz and Ian Pegg (eds.), Under the Imperial Carpet: Essays in Black History 1780-1950 (Rabbit Press, 1986).
‘The Negro Renaissance and England’ in Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (ed.), Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance (Greenwood Press, 1980 and University of Tennessee Press, 1993).
‘A Revelation in Strange Humanity: Six Congo Pygmies in Britain, 1905-1907’ in Bernth Lindfors (ed.), Africans on Stage. Studies in Ethnological Show Business (Indiana University Press, 1999).
CONTRIBUTIONS TO JOURNALS
New Community, the Journal of the Commission for Racial Equality, London, published:
‘The Coloured Man’s Complaint’ (Autumn/Winter 1983);
‘Beef Pie with a Suet Crust. A Black Childhood in Wigan (1906-1920)’ (Spring 1984);
‘Edward T. Nelson (1874-1940)’ (Winter 1984-1985);
‘John Alexander Barbour-James (1867-1954)’ (Autumn 1986);
‘High Society and Black Entertainers in the 1920s and 1930s’ (Spring 1987).
Black Perspective in Music, New York, published:
‘Roland Hayes in London, 1921’ (Spring 1982);
‘”In Dahomey” in London in 1903’ (Spring 1983);
‘Conversation with Leslie Thompson’ (Spring 1984);
‘Some Recent Findings on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’ (Fall 1985) with Paul McGilchrist;
‘Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: a Postscript’ (Fall 1986) with Paul McGilchrist;
‘Conversation with Josephine Harreld Love’ (1990).
Black Music Research Journal, of the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, published:
‘”The Foremost Musician of his Race”: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor of England, 1875-1912’ (Fall 1990);
‘The Jamaica Native Choir in Britain, 1906-1908’ (Spring 1993);
‘Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: The Early Years’ and ‘Requiem – Hiawatha in the 1920s and 1930s” (Fall 2001) a volume edited by Jeffrey Green.
‘Black Musical Internationalism in England in the 1920s’ (Spring 1995) with Howard Rye.
‘Memories of the SSO: Descendants Speak’ and ‘Edmund Jenkins of South Carolina’ (Spring 2010) a volume dedicated to the Southern Syncopated Orchestra.
The Journal of Caribbean History published:
‘West Indian Doctors in London: John Alcindor (1873-1924) and James Jackson Brown (1882-1953)’ (June 1986).
Immigrants and Minorities, London, published:
‘A Black Community? – London, 1919’ (March 1986);
‘John Alcindor (1873-1924): A Migrant’s Biography’ (July 1987);
‘Some Findings on Britain’s Black Working Class, 1900-1914’ (July 1990).
Storyville, a jazz publication of Chigwell, Essex published a number of short pieces. Many were used in the Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
Other reference works have published Jeffrey Green’s articles including The Oxford Companion to Black British History and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The latter has 35 articles including Isaac Brown, impostor; Isaac Dickerson, singer and preacher; Joseph Jackson Fuller, missionary; Martini Maccomo, lion tamer; Eddie Manning, criminal; and J. S. Risien Russell, neurologist.
He edited Leslie Thompson’s autobiography (Rabbit Press, 1985) which was reissued as Swing from a Small Island. The Story of Leslie Thompson (Northway Publications, 2009).
He was nominated for a Grammy in 2015 for his work (jointly with Rainer Lotz and Howard Rye) on the 44-CD boxed set with two books, Black Europe. This rescued recordings made in Europe by people of African descent prior to 1928.
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