Alton Adams

His music was performed by the bands of John Philip Sousa and Edwin Franko Goldman and his march "The Governor's Own" (1921) appears as the first selection on the bicentennial album Pride of America, released by New World Records.

Adams learned to play piccolo (chosen primarily because the instrument was less expensive than a full-size flute) and joined the St. Thomas Municipal Band in 1906.

Simultaneously, he studied music theory and composition late into the nights through correspondence courses with Dr. Hugh A. Clark at the University of Pennsylvania.

His passion for reading and writing bore fruit as early as 1910 when he first contributed an article on the black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to The Dominant.

When on the eve of its entrance into World War I, the United States purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark, Adams possessed a unique combination of administrative skill and community service with credibility on the U.S. mainland and no problematic political entanglements that allowed him to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity.

He traveled to the U.S. mainland for the first time in 1922 to research music education programs, but the highpoint of his naval career was a 1924 tour of the U.S. eastern seaboard.

In 1933 he retired into the Naval Fleet Reserve and returned to St. Thomas, not long after resuming his duties for the public school music program.

A brief return to newspaper editorship for The Bulletin [St. Thomas] was cut short by World War II, when he was recalled to active duty.

Sent back to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base Adams took over an all-white unit and received permission to reinstate eight former bandsmen thus creating the first racially integrated band sanctioned by the U.S. Navy.