our musical architects take the rough timber of Negro themes and fashion from it music which will prove that we, too, have national feelings and characteristics, as have the European peoples whose forms we have zealously followed for so long. Throughout his lifetime, Dett continued to study music, including studies at many prestigious institutions such as the American Conservatory of Music, at Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. Each summer, he attended major national institutions. In 1919, he founded the Musical Arts Society which organized concerts with artists such as Marian Anderson, Henry T. Burleigh, Grainger, Roland Hayes, Sousa and Clarence Cameron White and the Belgian Royal Band who presented Dett with the Palm and Ribbon Award. From 1920 to 1921, he attended Harvard University, where he studied with Arthur Foote, winning two prizes. Don't Be Weary Traveller, a choral composition, won the Francis Boott Award, while his essay "The Emancipation of Negro Music" won the Bowdoin prize. His interest in composition had to accommodate his demands of teaching and administration. Percy Grainger recorded the "Juba" from In the Bottoms during Dett's year at Harvard. Dett also composed collections of spirituals, which he had arranged, including Religious Folksongs of the Negro (1927) and The Dett Collections of Negro Spirituals (1936). Dett received a Holstein prize for his contributions as a composer. From 1924 to 1926, Dett served as president of The National Association of Negro Musicians. Founded in Chicago in 1919, the association is the United States' oldest organization dedicated to the preservation, encouragement, and advocacy of all genres of African-American music. He also became involved with the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools. In 1929, Dett travelled to France to study at the Fontainebleau school of music with composer Nadia Boulanger. He earned a Masters of Music degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester in 1932. In 1933, after resigning from the Hampton Institute, Dett served as the choral conductor for Stromberg-Carlson's NBC radio broadcasts. He wrote the oratorio The Ordering of Moses (1937). It was conducted by Eugene Goosens in its premiere on May 7, 1937, with a chorus of 350 and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the Cincinnati May Festival in Ohio. From 1937 until 1942, Dett served as Visiting Director of Music at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina. With its chorus he toured across Canada and the United