Berkley Native Dolores Collins Benjamin: Accomplished Musician

“Sounds of Music: The Dolores Collins Benjamin Story.”

By Barbara Kukla (Swing City Press)
 
       The name Dolores Collins Benjamin is not a name which sets prominently in any recent history book in Norfolk on music, a profession where the Norfolk native made her name  in northern New Jersey.
       But thanks to Barbara Kukla, a New Jersey journalist and friend of Mrs. Collins Benjamin, that has changed.

        Kukla has written a biography on the Norfolk native entitled “Sounds of Music: The Dolores Collins Benjamin Story.”
       The recently published book  (Swing City Press)  gives a remarkable and detailed history of  the life of  the woman who was born and raised in Norfolk’s Berkley section before her family moved north after her father’s death.
       Today Dolores Collins Benjamin is aged and living in a retirement home in Newark, N.J.  Kukla, who calls her "Dolores" in the book, is not only Dolores Collins Benjamin's biographer but her care giver since most of her family has died or lost contact.
             Kukla has written a number of books on famous people who lived in Newark after leaving her job as a reporter for the Newark Ledger. Kukla writes she discovered that Dolores founded, in 1939, the first and still performing Northern New Jersey African American Philharmonic Glee Club in New Jersey and perhaps the nation.
       Along life’s path, Dolores managed to cross the paths of some of the most  brilliant and prolific members of the elite jazz and black musical community during the 30s, 40s and 50s.
       Ms. Kukla managed to  track down some Collins family members, childhood friends in Hampton Roads, college chums and people Dolores established as friends during her time in New Jersey over the years. Although married twice she had no children. But she spent many of her years working with retarded children in New Jersey.

      Dolores was the only daughter  born  to  Martin Luther and  Mamie Collins in 1913, after the couple moved to a small waterfront house on Walnut Street in Berkley, according to  Kukla’s book.  The Collins were light skinned blacks who moved into a section of Berkley. They joined four other Black, light skinned  families in that section of the neighborhood. Mr. Collins was a mail man and his wife maintained the family home.  Young Dolores graduated from Booker T. Washington High School and then enrolled in Virginia State College at Petersburg.

 
        Kukla’s book reveals that Dolores never tried to hide the fact that she was African American, although she could have used her light complexion to great advantage during those years.
She became a member  of  the junior choir at Central Baptist Church.  Dolores recalls the church being burned down in 1922 during the great Berkley fire where over 1200 structures were destroyed.
       For long time residents of Hampton Roads, the book takes a look at the life of African Americans, even privileged light skinned ones like the Collins. The Attucks Theater, Buckroe Beach, the Chowan beaches where she taught herself to swim, and Winston, North Carolina, from where her parents hailed, are easy historic references.
  She would travel back to North Carolina each summer to spend time with her father’s huge family.
       When the stellar high schooler arrived at Virginia State College in 1930, it was during the early days of the Depression.  So her ascent to college was indeed a privileged outlet few other blacks could enjoy but a predicted one, according to her father.
       Kukla intertwined some history from Virginia State College with Dolores Collins Benjamin's life.  She was not a member of the class of 1934, but members made her an honorary member.  Dolores later completed her degrees at Rutgers and small Dana College in Newark.
  Virginia State was the first  state-supported school for blacks in Virginia.  During the early 1900s, the majority white legislature wanted to convert it back into a school where only “manual and not academic” training was taught.
Black leaders of the school refused, stating that black children needed formal educational training. Lawmakers fired the all black board of directors, hiring an all white panel to invoke “changes.” There was a tense political tug of war between the state's black and white leadership in Richmond, before the issue was resolved in the 1920s.
       In the midst of the depression the Work Progressive Association paid students to maintain the campus. Dolores, according to Kukla’s book, painted buildings.
       One of  her instructors was Undine Smith Moore who was a Pulitzer Prize nominee for her musical compositions at the time.
       Alston Burleigh directed the  school’s choral society. His father  Harry T. Burleigh arranged  the music for old Negro spirituals “Deep River” and “Were you There.”
       Kukla’s book depicts a young Dolores Collins, who had come of age by the time she left Virginia State College. When news of her father's death came, she and her mother moved to Newark to start a new life.  When she arrived in Jersey she found a Newark that was one  of the most racially diverse, in certain neighborhoods, but industrially strong in depression era America.
In the late 1930s, she married a  social worker named Al Tillery. In their small cramped apartment she began forming the North Jersey Philharmonic Glee Club. They would practice in her small living room. Soon they began getting invitations for engagements around the city, especially in the churches.
She later married  soldier and musician Joseph Benjamin after her first marriage ran aground. Benjamin was a musician who played with Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. These luminaries of the music world in the pre-1960s were intimate friends with her and her husband.
       The Glee Club performed at some of the most well-known venues in the Northeast.
       ‘She made that Glee club into one of the most respected musical organizations on the East Coast,” said Ms. Kukla.  "I think this book reveals a lot about a person whose life is not well documented in the history books. But it also details the unique world of music in the 30s 40s and 50s and 60s. It also gives a revealing look at Black life during that time."
       Delores Collins Benjamin, Kukla said, spent her last working years teaching mentally challenged children in East Orange's public schools.
       For more information about the book ‘Sounds of Music” The Dolores Collins Benjamin Story” published by Swing City Press call 973-325-3760 or bjkukla@aol.com.   

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