Berkeley. 2008. April 2008. University of California Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780520251311. Edited by Mark Clague. Foreword by Samuel Floyd, Jr. Music of the African Diaspora, 12. 388 pages. hardcover. keywords: African American Music America History Biography. DESCRIPTION - Alton Augustus Adams, Sr., was a musician, writer, hotelier, and the first black bandmaster of the United States Navy. Born in the Virgin Islands in 1889, Adams joined the U.S. military in 1917. Although naval policy at the time restricted blacks to menial jobs, Adams and his all-black ensemble provided a bridge between the local population and their all-white naval administrators. His memoirs, edited by Mark Clague, with a foreword by Samuel Floyd, Jr., reveal an inspired activist who believed music could change the world, mitigate racism, and bring prosperity to his island home. Alton Augustus Adams Sr. was a bandmaster and civic leader in the Virgin Islands in the first half of the twentieth century. inventory #36328