Capitola Dickerson
| Capitola Dickerson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Capitola Dickerson |
| Born |
September 21, 1913 Urbana, Ohio, USA
|
| Died | June 15, 2012 (aged 98) |
| Occupation(s) |
Teacher, Music educator, Performer, TWIN award 2009 |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 78 |
Capitola Leodra Dickerson, also known as Cappie Dickerson, (September 21, 1913 – June 15, 2012) was an American piano instructor in Summit, New Jersey and graduate of the Juilliard School in Manhattan who was notable for teaching several generations of students. She was revered by local authorities for her volunteer service and civil rights contributions and community leadership. Some of her pupils have become renowned such as Tom Varner and Lawton C. Johnson, and she was friends with renowned jazz singer Bill Robinson. In 2011, she was presented with a Key to the City by Summit mayor Jordan Glatt. According to business executive Frank Bolden, she was a "quiet, unselfish person" who lived by the Golden Rule of treating others as one wished to be treated oneself.
Dickerson was born in Urbana, Ohio to Amanda and Lee Dickerson, but she made Summit, New Jersey her home where she lived for more than 78 years. Her mother died when she was a teenager, and she lived with her father until she graduated from high school in 1930. She lived with relatives including her grandfather, Benjamin, an ex-slave, who had witnessed a Civil War battle at the age of ten in the state of Virginia. She was denied entrance to the Diller-Quaile School because of racial discrimination but studied piano with Helen Chrystal Bender of the Summit School of Music. She worked as a domestic, and at one point, she worked at Bell Labs before becoming a music teacher. She attended Columbia University and New York University and graduated from the Juilliard School in New York City. She was a member of the Wallace Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church for 80 years and served as the church's historian.
Dickerson taught piano to thousands of students over a period of seventy-eight years. She emphasized precision, sticking strictly to piano compositions as written, and practice; in 2004, she was quoted in the Los Angeles Times for stressing the benefits of practice. She taught New Jersey preschoolers in Cranford and Millburn and she taught music to the hearing impaired. According to one estimate, her students live in all fifty states in the United States.
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