Instruments of Change with Ruth Greenfield
A determination to counter segregation and anti-Semitism in 1950s Miami inspired Ruth Greenfield – the now 97-year-old matriarch of RE’s Greenfield family – to found the interracial Fine Arts Conservatory in 1951. Her center of music, dance and art defied the segregationist practices of the time, influenced generations of students, and inspired a fresh round of reflection and reminiscence at Ransom Everglades on January 13.
Members of the Ransom Everglades community gathered for a virtual conversation with Ruth Greenfield, four of her children and retired Miami-Dade County Judge Wendell Graham ’74 – a conservatory student who later became the first Black student at the Ransom School.
Head of School Penny Townsend moderated the event, the first Paul Ransom Digital Podium event of 2021. Watch it here.
Members of the Ransom Everglades community gathered for a virtual conversation with Ruth Greenfield, four of her children and retired Miami-Dade County Judge Wendell Graham ’74 – a conservatory student who later became the first Black student at the Ransom School.
Head of School Penny Townsend moderated the event, the first Paul Ransom Digital Podium event of 2021. Watch it here.
From the day Ruth Greenfield opened the conservatory, she and her late husband faced contempt and even lawsuits from neighbors and outsiders. She conceived the school after studying music in France, where she observed musicians of many backgrounds gathering to make music.
Graham and the Greenfield children – writer Charles Greenfield ’68, filmmaker and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders ’70, clinical social worker Alice Greenfield ’76 and golfer Frank Greenfield – spent their childhood Saturdays at the school, blissfully unaware of any controversy.
“As children, I’m not sure we realized this social experiment that was going on,” Graham said. “We were absolutely children and we were having a great time. We were learning.”
Noted Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: “I don’t think we understood what it was, how radical it was, how different it was.”
Years later, they comprehended the legacy of the conservatory, which was captured in the recent documentary Instruments of Change. Greenfield-Sanders, a Grammy winner and Emmy nominee who won the Ransom Everglades Founders' Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to the Community, tied his time at the conservatory to later artistic works focusing on marginalized groups.
Graham, now a member of the school's Anti-Racism Task Force, explained how his time at the conservatory, and relationship with the Greenfield family, put him on a road that led to the Ransom School and helped him launch his legal and judicial career.
"The great success of the conservatory," Greenfield-Sanders said, "is the influence it had on all of us."
Graham, now a member of the school's Anti-Racism Task Force, explained how his time at the conservatory, and relationship with the Greenfield family, put him on a road that led to the Ransom School and helped him launch his legal and judicial career.
"The great success of the conservatory," Greenfield-Sanders said, "is the influence it had on all of us."
Watch the event here
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Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.