Cleveland Press on 17 November 1958 described the MPSO members as ‘housewives, factory workers, students, and professional people […] making beautiful music together in the Mt. Pleasant area’. On occasion, Donald White, the Cleveland Orchestra’s first black cellist, would join the section. The conductor of the PCO, Raymond L. Smith, was also a violist, but he made a living as a postman.
The creators of the early black orchestras faced hurdles with employment. Charles L. Turner, who conducted the MPSO (which disbanded on his death in 1999), is a case in point. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in music in 1941 at West Virginia State College (now University; in Institute, West Virginia) and a master’s degree and PhD (1953) at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now part of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), he got a job as music director at a high school in a small town in West Virginia. Later he applied for a position at Steubenville High School, in Steubenville, Ohio, close to the borders of both Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Although the Ohio school system had taught black and white children together since 1883, they had not hired a black teacher before. Concerned parents discussed the appointment at school board meetings, and the board voted to approve his employment owing to the support of white colleagues. The local paper published an article – ‘Steubenville Gives Negro Tutor a Job’ (below) – describing these discussions, but its title misrepresented and thus undermined his previous position, which was as music director, not tutor.