Ella Jenkins

[2][3] According to culture writer Mark Guarino, "across her 67-year career, Jenkins firmly established the genre of children's music as a serious endeavor — not just for artists to pursue but also for the recording industry to embrace and promote.

[5][6] When she was four years old, she moved to Chicago with her older brother and her now single mother, who worked as a domestic worker.

[7] Her uncle, Floyd Johnson, introduced her to the harmonica[8] and the blues of such renowned musicians as T-Bone Walker, Memphis Slim, Little Brother Montgomery and Big Bill Broonzy.

[5][15] At Woodrow Wilson, she became interested in the music of other cultures through her Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican friends.

In 1956, while working at the YWCA, she was invited to perform on The Totem Club, a children's program which aired on WTTW, Chicago's NET (forerunner of PBS) affiliate.

[19][20][21] She was soon offered a regular job as the host of a Thursday afternoon program on the channel, which she titled This is Rhythm.

[15] She invited guests from diverse cultures, including Odetta and Big Bill Broonzy,[21] to share their music's rhythms on her show.

[5] Later that year, Jenkins met American folklorist, educator and record producer Kenneth S. Goldstein at the Gate of Horn folk music club in Chicago.

Goldstein recommended that she bring a demo tape to Moses Asch, the founder of Folkways Records.

[7] Asch was receptive to her music and in 1957, her first album, Call-And-Response: Rhythmic Group Singing, was released by Folkways.

Jenkins developed "Adventures in Rhythm", a program aimed at teenagers, which she took on the road and put on at school assemblies until September 1963.

[25][26] In 1985, she appeared on Free at Last, a television special about Martin Luther King Jr. which was hosted by LeVar Burton.

In collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, she acted as a U.S. delegate to Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China, and the former Soviet Union.

Her 1970 album, A Long Time, included African American spirituals and songs from the civil rights movement.

Author Ty-Juana Taylor noted that "Ms. Jenkins has used music as a tool to bridge and unite people across the world, especially in highly divisive times of the U.S. Civil Rights era.

Academic Gayle F. Ward plans to release a biography of Jenkins in 2025 through Chicago University Press.