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It's been said that the passion of the human soul finds its food in music. This painting celebrates the spirit and music of the world famous Jenkins Orphanage Band.
This native Charleston band was born from a simple act of charity. In the late 1880's, after discovering four young abandoned boys in an empty railroad car on a frigid morning, Daniel Jenkins, an African American laborer, took the boys home.
Although he and his wife Lena had children of their own and very little money, he believed that the meeting was no random event. He felt he had been chosen for a higher purpose: to be a missionary to the thousands of unwanted black children who had been left out of Charleston's system of public care, thus becoming the founder of The Jenkins Orphanage.
Taken from: "The Cradle of Jazz" by James Hutchisson, Charleston Magazine, April 2005
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