Harriet Gibbs Marshall

Harriet Gibbs Marshall (1868–1941) was a Canadian-born African-American musician, writer, and educator. Marshall is best known for opening the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression in 1903 in Washington, DC.

Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Harriet Aletha Gibbs was the daughter of Mifflin Gibbs, the first African American judge, and Maria Alexander Gibbs, a school teacher. There was one sister, Ida Alexander Gibbs.

In 1889, Gibbs became the first African-American woman to graduate from Oberlin Conservatory with a degree in music.

She founded the music program at Eckstein Norton University in Cane Springs, Bullitt County, Kentucky in the last decade of the 19th century. In 1900, Gibbs moved to Washington, D.C. and took the position of music supervisor in the segregated African-American public schools there.

She founded the Washington Conservatory of Music in 1903. It focused on classical European music. In 1911, an elocution program was added, and the school was renamed the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression.

In 1906, Gibbs wed Napoleon Bonaparte Marshall, a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. 1897) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1900).

Marshall joined the Bahá'í Faith in 1912. She hosted Bahá'í events at the Conservatory.

Marshall traveled to Haiti in the 1920s when her husband, Captain Marshall of the United States Army, was appointed to a commission to investigate abuses during the United States occupation of Haiti.

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