Aleane Fitz-Carter Papers

Aleane Fitz-Carter was a poet, pianist, teacher, choir director, storyteller, actress, and so much more. She was born in Council Bluffs in 1929 and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and the University of Omaha, majoring in music and education. An early paying job came at age 11 when she played for and directed the choir at Beulah Baptist Church in Council Bluffs.

Among her work in Omaha from the 1950s through 1980s, Fitz-Carter served as Minister of Music at Cleaves Temple C.M.E., teacher in the Omaha Public School District for fourteen years (including at Saratoga Elementary School), instructor at the Omaha Opportunities Industrialization Center, and presenter on Black history for local television. She taught Black history and directed the Soul Choir at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the 1970s. From 1970 to 1974, Fitz-Carter taught courses for the UNO History Department and Black Studies Department. In 1970-1971, she taught a night course in Black history and when she was not rehired for the 1971-1972 year, students successfully petitioned the UNO administration that she be rehired. Her last class at UNO was "Soul Choir in the Black Experience" in spring 1974.

Later after moving to California, she taught music in the California Community College system and Music Appreciation to adults in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was Minister of Music at Olivet Lutheran Church in Los Angeles. She also created and hosted a show based around African dishes (for which she was introduced as an African Cuisine Artist, Soul Food gourmet, and Food Historian) for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and worked as an actress. Fitz-Carter continued to contribute late in life; at age 89 in 2018, she could be found directing the Men's Chorus at Park Windsor Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

During her professional life, Fitz-Carter traveled throughout the United States to conduct instrumental music workshops for pianists and organists, along with choral workshops in contemporary, soul gospel, and spirituals. She held artist-in-residence posts in school districts across Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri supported by those states' arts councils. As a professional storyteller, she performed her work nationally; one of her stories surrounded the emancipation of her paternal great grandfather in Texas. During travel to South Africa, Ghana, Morroco, and Nigeria, she recited poems and taught rhythm games of children who had been enslaved in the colonies and later the United States.