William Levi Dawson (September 26, 1899 – May 2, 1990) was an American composer, choir director, professor, and musicologist.

In 1912, Dawson ran away from home to study music full-time as a pre-college student at the Tuskegee Institute (now University) under the tutelage of school president Booker T. Washington.

Dawson paid his tuition by being a music librarian and manual laborer working in the school’s Agricultural Division.

[1][2] His teaching career began in the Kansas City public school system, followed by a tenure with the Tuskegee Institute from 1931–1956.

Dawson began composing at a young age, and early in his compositional career, his Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano was performed by the Kansas City Symphony.

His Negro Folk Symphony of 1934 garnered a great deal of attention at its world premiere by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Dawson's arrangements of traditional African-American spirituals are widely published in the United States and are regularly performed by school, college and community choral programs.

In November of 1934, Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the leadership of Leopold Stokowski.

After 4 back-to-back performances in November, Dawson receded from the headlines, and the symphony was put to rest for 18 years.

According to the composer, this is meant to represent an "atmosphere of the humdrum life of a people whose bodies were baked by the sun and lashed with the whip for two hundred and fifty years; whose lives were prescribed before they were born"[1].

The symphony ends on an ominous note, providing the listener with a sense of incompletion, again meant to represent an unresolved struggle.