LaVerne Clouden, ground-breaking marching band leader made history in Cleveland Schools:

These profiles of important and influential Clevelanders are part of a series of “Untold Stories,” presented this week on cleveland.com to commemorate the start of Black History Month.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Growing up on E. 40th and Woodland, LaVerne Duncan Clouden didn’t realize she was “poor.”

“We didn’t have a TV, so I didn’t see how others lived. We didn’t have a car, so I didn’t venture out much, so I was in high school before I learned there were people who lived in nice houses and had a lot of money,” she wrote in her autobiography, “My Musical Journey: A to G.”

What she did have was music.

Her mother was a singer who taught her to sing harmony. Her father, Edward Mosley, Jr., played in local clubs in a Jazz band and bought her a piano after she discovered her own, innate ability to make music when she tapped a spoon against a glass of water on the dinner table to create a “beautiful sound.”

But the most telling aspect of Clouden’s book is that she begins it by relating the story of her first encounter with prejudice.

She was in first grade when she heard a string orchestra for the first time. Mesmerized by the sounds emulating from the instruments, she declared out loud “I want to play one of those instruments.”

Her teacher looked at her and said “You poor thing, black people don’t play those. Those are white people’s instruments.”

Why would she begin her story with such a hurtful experience?

In an email, Clouden said she felt it was important to share because “having something like that happen as a child can shape what you do afterward in life. I could have listened and decided I would never play.

“Children are taught by adults and hearing something like that can cause a kid to have problems later in life because they listen to what we say,” she said.

“I wrote this biography in hopes to be able to help others enjoy life and achieve without fear of not being accepted.”

It wasn’t until junior high school when Clouden got the opportunity to play the clarinet. Always fascinated by the other instruments, she would often stay after school, where she taught herself to play all of the instruments available to her. In high school, Clouden helped other students who were just beginning to play.

Upon graduation from Central High School – just one month after she turned 17 – Clouden took a job with a traveling band. When the band director fell ill, she was the only one who knew how to direct, so she directed rehearsals. But when it came time to perform, Clouden had to turn the baton over to a male member to lead the band.

“It wasn’t just that I was Black, it was that I was so young – and a girl – and in all those cases, it just wasn’t done,” she wrote.

So Clouden decided to return to the classroom — this time to Western Reserve University (now Case-Western Reserve University) — which had a strong musical program. Despite a social worker’s race-based snap judgment — “you have to be very smart for this school,” Clouden said she was “thrilled” when told she would need to take an entrance exam, since she knew she would be judged on her merit, rather than her race.

Her high marks earned her a full scholarship, and her name was on the Dean’s list each semester. She eventually earned her Master of Arts in Musical Education.

Clouden dreamed of “leading a big brassy marching band in an inner-city high school,” and applied for a high school position in Cleveland Schools first, pretending she had no idea it was considered a man’s job.

She was told the job she had applied for was ‘too rough’ and she was ‘too quiet and mild-mannered.’ She was encouraged to teach at an elementary school.

The compromise was a job at a junior high school “teaching mostly voice.”

But Clouden said she told the superintendent at the interview, “One day you’re going to beg me to take a high school band and I’m going to turn you down.”

After nearly a decade of teaching music, that same district supervisor came to her to ask: “Are you ready to make history?”

Clouden was offered the band director’s job at John F. Kennedy High School where the band director had had a heart attack and a string of substitute teachers had been unable to control band members. She did not turn him down.

As the first female band director in the Cleveland School District, Clouden spent several years building the marching band program at JFK in spite of the resistance she encountered from her students’ families at first.

She won over people when, at the first football game of the season, Clouden’s students performed a flawless “kaleidoscope marching” performance – where the band moved to form changing pictures on the field.

“The band members thought I was crazy when I had them out on the field learning the routine with sheets of paper that detailed the steps, and they didn’t know why,” she wrote. “Then I took one person from each squad up into the stands so they could see it. Once they started to explain it to their bandmates, everyone got on board pretty quickly.”

Clouden recalls that first performance as “a stunner.”

Though she won the hearts of her students and the full support of the parents, the other teachers at the school were jealous of her success – one publicly calling her the “music freak.”

Because of the lack of staff support, the band faced budget cuts and she had to work doubly hard to get her students what they needed to perform. But she had the support of the students and parents, who were always willing to raise money and get the band whatever they needed to perform.

In spite of the trials she faced, the JFK Marching Band was invited to exclusive events across the country and performed in television commercials. They were even booked for an international television show during her tenure.

In 1976, Clouden made history again when she was named the first Black director of the All-American Youth Symphonic Band, Orchestra and Chorus. Her students toured the world to perform – opportunities her inner-city kids would not have otherwise had access to without her.

Sadly, the attention Clouden received for her efforts with band students in Northeast Ohio, was not all positive. As her notoriety soared, crank calls and vandalism of her home in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood escalated as well.

One evening, Clouden was sorting clothes on the couch when a brick was thrown through the window at the exact spot where her husband usually occupied to watch television each evening. Clouden was convinced someone had hoped to kill him. That evening, police encouraged her and her husband to leave the house for a few nights.

Clouden recalls that when police details watching the property would report “things were quiet” and they would return, crank calls and the vandalism would begin again, almost immediately.

“We were so certain our lives were in danger, we left everything we had behind,” she said.

The couple moved to California, where their son was working in the recording industry. She still lives there today.

In spite of the personal and professional hurdles Clouden was forced to overcome, she still believes a musical education is important for everyone. “Being in music makes you more tolerant. It’s what makes us love each other, whether we know it or not.”