Melissa Fuell-Cuther

Melissa Fuell-Cuther’s out-of-print biography, "Blind Boone: His Life and Achievements," relates the highlights of Boone’s harrowing journey and also testifies to the struggles of many African Americans during the Jim Crow era. With the initial publication of the Boone biography in 1915, Fuell-Cuther broke ground as the first African American author to write about the life of a black musician. As a member of Boone’s concert company, she provided firsthand knowledge of Boone’s early years, his career performing tours across the country, and perhaps most importantly, his professional and personal relationship with John Lange, whom many at the time considered the best entertainment manager, black or white, in the country.

What little is known today about Fuell must be teased out from obituaries, news articles, and the book "Blind Boone, His Early Life and His Achievements" itself. Born in Warrensburg, Missouri, on May 15, 1886, she received her degree from the Lincoln Institute (now Lincoln University) in Jefferson City, Missouri. "I always wanted to attend the then Lincoln Institute State college at Jefferson City," she recalled. "Through interested teachers I found a way to work my way through Lincoln. I scrubbed the wood covered halls on my knees, as no one used mops." She graduated with second highest honors from Lincoln --- losing out on the highest honor, she believed, only because she was competing with a male student.

After graduation, Fuell traveled to Colorado where she searched for a teaching job while supporting herself as a house cleaner. She returned to Missouri when she was hired to teach first grade in Joplin, where she remained from 1905 to 1912. A talented singer who had performed as a child, Fuell joined the Blind Boone Concert Company at the suggestion of Emma Smith, the company's lead singer. Like other singers before her, Fuell also worked as the company secretary. After becoming acquainted with he skills, John Lange, (Blind Boone's manager) commissioned her to write a biography of John Boone, which, given Boone's popularity and fame, Lange expected to become a bestseller. Fuell also detailed the hardship and discrimination the troupe faced in the days of Jim Crow with a clear voice and no self pity, believing firmly in Lange's dictum that merit, not sympathy, wins. Two editions of the biography were published during her lifetime: one in 1915 by Burton Publishing Company of Kansas City, Missouri, and a later 1918 edition, published in Robbins, Tennessee, by the Evangel Publishing Society.

In 1915, Fuell left the company to promote the book, but despite her efforts and Boone's fame, the book had limited sales. The following year, she married Charles William Cuther of Carthage, Missouri. Cuther was a hotel employee renowned for his personality and sense of humor. He worked for more than fifty years at the Connor Hotel in Joplin, a popular stop for entertainers and celebrities. The couple purchased several properties, including apartment houses, where they hosted black performers such as Marion Anderson and Duke Ellington, who were refused lodgings at the area's whites-only hotels.

Fuell-Cuther's accomplishments as a community leader and educator were impressive during a time when blacks were barred from many places of work and education. When she saw a need, she did not allow the existence of segregation to stop her. One of her colleagues recalled in later years that "when politicians saw her coming, they knew it was business." Recognizing the importance of George Washington Carver to American history, she helped to preserve his home and later worked to establish the George Washington Carver National Park site, the first such site to honor an African American. She was instrumental in opening and supporting the George Washington Carver Memorial Nursery School on the Carver property, the first organization of its kind for working African American families in Joplin. The Carver property, under Fuell-Cuther's leadership, also became the site of Ewert Park, the first park for African Americans in Joplin. She formed the first African American Girl Scout troop in Missouri in 1946 and worked to develop many other projects within the black community, including Lincoln High School, the Ewert Park Little League and Camp Mintahama. She was also responsible for many blacks gaining entrance into the Santa Claus Christmas parade, a traditionally all-white affair.

After the death of her husband, she briefly lived in Kansas City with their daughter, Charlene Cuther Anderson, but returned to live out her remaining years in Joplin.

After her death in 1968, the community erected a monument in her honor at the George Washington Carver Memorial Nursery School. The plaque is dedicated to "Melissa Cuther: Educator, Founder, Humanitarian." In an interview shortly before her death, Melissa Fuell-Cuther reflected, "There are so many beautiful opportunities to help make the world a better place in which to live."

Sources: Merit, Not Sympathy, Wins: The Life and Times of Blind Boone edited by Mary Collins Barile, Christine Montgomery (2012)