Ada Crogman Franklin's Milestones of a Race was produced in 15 cities in the 1920s. The pageant depicted African American history in nine scenes with music and frequently involved 500 or 600 cast members. This paper explains Milestones' origins in the recreation movement and explores the ways it was received by its participants and both Black and white audiences.

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Marian Wilson Kimber has taught at Iowa since 2004. Her second book, Clubwomen Activists and the Making of American Music is currently under revision for publication by the University of Illinois Press. A related article about women’s clubs’ promotion of American women composers will appear in JAMS, the Journal of the American Musicological Society next spring. Her recent publications include “Making Dvořák Iowan: Perle Schmidt, Spillville, and the Construction of Iowa’s Musical Identity” in the latest issue of Annals of Iowa (this took a record-setting six years to be published), a chapter on Fanny Hensel’s reception in The Mendelssohns in Context finally forthcoming from Cambridge University Press after several years, and an online essay about Amy Beach commissioned by the British Library. Wilson Kimber writes for the blog, Women’s Song Forum, and is the incoming editor of the Journal of the Society for American Music. Last year her most fun activities were hosting a day-long Jane Austen and music 250th birthday bash in the Old Capitol and performing women’s comic spoken word compositions with Iowa Percussion.