African-American Women


Phillipa Duke Schuyler

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Source: Schuyler, Philippa Duke. Good Men Die. New York: Twin Circle, 1969. Schuyler, Philippa Duke. Good Men Die. New York: Twin Circle, 1969.

The following is from the back cover of Good Men Die:

Philippa Schuyler, born during the Depression Era, enlivened it considerably. She was two years old when the New York Herald Tribune discovered that she could read and write. When she was four, Irl Allison, head of the National Piano Teachers Guild discovered that she was also a musical genius. From the age of five to eleven, she won repeated medals from the New York Philharmonic Young Peoples Concerts. During this time, she had also been appearing on WCBS with Deems Taylor, and on a weekly NBC children's program, "MCeed by Milton Cross". At fourteen she was soloist in the Sain Saens Concerto with the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium, as well as composer of Rumpelstiltskin, a symphonic scherzo which they featured.

Ten years later she was appearing around the world with major orchestras. Her tours often took her to troubled spots, and quite naturally, she began to write about them. During the Congo upheaval she was in Africa a dozen times, both as a concert pianist and as foreign correspondent for the Manchester Union Leader, The New York Daily Mirror, United Press Features, and Spadea Syndicate. Separate articles appeared in The Priest and The National Review. In December 1955, she made her debut with the Cairo Symphony in Egypt performing the Concerto Arabo, and her own four movement concerto, Le Nil. She went directly from there to Nigeria for concerts and found herself in the middle of a coup d'etat which she wrote up for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Her published books include: Adventures in Black and White, Who Killed The Congo, Jungle Saints, and Kingdom of Dreams. She also wrote for Triumph magazine and Twin Circle.

Miss Schuyler was decorated by His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie, and had an audience with the Royal Family of Malaya in 1959. She had the honor of being received both by His Holiness, Pope John, and His Holiness, Pope Paul VI.

She had successfully evacuated seventy nuns and little girls from St. Joan of Arc in Hué; and was on another trip to carry eight boys from Binh Linh High School, when she and the youngest child who sat on her lap in the crowded helicopter, were killed.
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