When most Americans had forgotten the contributions of black women to the country's music, D. Antoinette Handy remembered.
Handy, a music professor at Virginia State College (now Virginia State University) from 1966 to 1971 and at Virginia Union University in 1979-80, wrote the biographical reference "Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras" and "The International Sweethearts of Rhythm," a profile of an influential female group in the early years of jazz. She also was the author of the directory "Black Conductors" and of "Jazz Man's Journey," a biography of Ellis Marsalis, the pianist and father of current jazz stars Wynton, Branford and Jason Marsalis.
Dorothy Antoinette Handy, born in New Orleans, began studying the flute as a child. She went on to earn degrees from The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and Northwestern University School of Music in Evanston, Ill., and an artist's diploma from the Paris Conservatoire.
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During the 1950s and '60s she played in symphony orchestras in Europe and the United States. She was among the first black members of the Richmond Symphony, serving as one of its flutists from 1966 to 1976, and formed the chamber group Trio Pro Viva with two other central Virginia musicians, pianist Russell Wilson and cellist Ulysses Kirksey.
In 1984, Handy moved to Washington to join the National Endowment for the Arts. Five years later, she became director of its music program, supervising the federal agency's awarding of grants to composers, performers and musical institutions.
At the NEA, Handy was instrumental in directing grant money to artists in a wider variety of musical styles. "I always fought to get people to recognize jazz as an art form," she recalled.
She also took on controversial issues such as the scarcity of black musicians in symphony orchestras and other classical-music groups. "It's not so much a question of discrimination," she said in 1990, "as of what you might call psychic direction. . . . Our training institutions have to convince black enrollees that there is a future in that direction."
Handy considered the term "classical" to be "not very informative and often misused. The fact is, music is music. Some of it you like, some you don't. Some will stand the test of time and some won't. Ethnicity and race have very little to do with it."
She left the endowment in 1993 to return to writing and teaching, joining the faculty of Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss.
Antoinette Handy died Oct. 21, 2002, in Jackson after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
