The 18th in a series of articles
for the 175th Anniversary of Bonham
Bonham, Texas -- Roberta Dodd (1895-1954) was born in the Tanktown section of Bonham. She attended
Washington School and later worked as a waitress at Curtiss Boarding House.
As a youth she sang in local churches, the Opera House and the Alexander Hotel.
With help from five socially prominent white women benefactors from Bonham, Mrs. E. F. White, Mrs. Zach Smith, Mrs. Homer Thompson, Mrs. John Rodgers, and Mrs. F. C. Allen, she attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas for two years, then entered Fisk College in Chicago.
After that she entered Chicago Musical College where she studied for six years. Her debut concert in Chicago was a huge success and received rave newspaper reviews.
The Chicago Daily News at that time wrote, "A voice with unusual charm, high and clear, yet soft. Her high notes are perfectly controlled and her pianissimo is of exquisite quality. Roberta Dodd expresses admirably all the joy and all the distress of the Negro spirituals."
She toured and performed over the next two years in many major US cities and at black colleges.
Her concert program included classical pieces as well as contemporary black composers. In her concert program she sang in German, Italian, French, Spanish and English, and included works by Bach and Brahms. In Chicago she had met and married Capt. William Crawford, a black WWI officer and war hero. They later divorced. Benefactors in Chicago arranged for her to travel to Paris for study.
Before sailing for Europe she returned to Bonham and gave a concert at the First Methodist Church and at the Fannin County Courthouse.
She gave a concert in the Fannin County District Courtroom on Saturday, March 24, 1928 at 8:00 p.m. and then another concert at the Methodist Church in Bonham after evening services on Sunday, March 25.
In Paris, Roberta married an African prince, Kojo Marc Tovalou-Houenou in 1932. He died in 1938.
Bonham Herald 10-13-1932
She was trapped in Paris when the Nazis occupied France in 1940. A German edict set out to eliminate “degenerate Jewish-Negro jazz” and all performances of black musicians were banned. Roberta later told friends that she had been sent to a concentration camp.
After liberation she worked for the American Red Cross and performed for US soldiers. Soldiers from Bonham sought her out in Paris at the urging of their mothers.
Her health was failing. She returned to Bonham in 1948. She never sang in public again.
She moved to Dallas.
She died on June 14, 1954 in Dallas and was buried in Gates Hill Cemetery in Bonham in an unmarked grave. Her death certificate gives her name as Roberta Dodd Crawford.
Sadly, as yet we have not found any recordings of her performances.
Want to know more? A more detailed article on her life is in Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas at
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth586972/m1/20/