Lillian Mae Bowles

Bowles, Lillian Mae (Pannell). b. Memphis, Tennessee, 18 September 1885; d. near Creston, Iowa, 25 June 1962. Bowles was among the first African American gospel music publishers, and perhaps the first significant black female publisher. Little is known about her background before she moved to Chicago from Memphis in the mid-1920s. The 1910 Census records her as a lodger and typesetter in a print shop in Tennessee. The 1940 Census lists Bowles as a head of household in Chicago with two boarders, gospel singer and composer Theodore R. Frye* and his wife Cordelia from Mississippi. After moving to Chicago, she married Thomas Pannell on 13 February 1942. Bowles established Bowles Music House...