Margaret Bonds was born Margaret Jeanette Allison Majors in Chicago, Illinois on March 3, 1913. Her father was a doctor and writer. He was very active in the civil rights movement. He started a medical group for Black doctors because they were not allowed to join the main American Medical Association. He also was a poet, journalist, and publisher who published a book for Black children titled First Steps and Nursery Rhymes (1920). Her mother was an accomplished musician who served as the organist and choir director at the Berean Baptist Church in Chicago. She was also a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians. Her mother taught her to play the piano before Bonds was five.
Margaret lived with her mother and not only took her maiden name, Bonds, but also her love for the piano. She grew up in a home that, while on the segregated Black south side of Chicago, was relatively affluent and a cultural mecca for musicians and other artists of color. She supported the fine arts by hosting Sunday musicales in her home. The musicales allowed aspiring young Black musicians to gather and meet leading artists and singers such as Abbie Mitchell, composers such as Will Marion Cook, Noble Sissle, Florence Price William Dawson, and poets such as Countée Cullen and Arna Bontemps.
By the age of eight Margaret had been taking piano lessons for a few years when she wrote her first music composition. In high school she studied with Florence Beatrice Price, the first Black woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer in the United States. She was given composition instruction from William Levi Dawson, an accomplished composer, conductor, trombonist, and educator. Bonds had the opportunity to copy parts for Price, Dawson, and other composers who worked and performed in Chicago. She also served as a piano accompanist during rehearsals for singers and dancers at the Empire Room of the Palmer House in Chicago. The inspiration and knowledge that she gained through these experiences were early influences on her work.
At the age of 16, Bonds attended Northwestern University for her Bachelors and Master in Music. It was a hostile environment for a young African-American woman. Margaret was allowed to study, but not allowed to live on campus. She called it a “terribly prejudiced place.” Bond's first prolonged experience with discrimination at Northwestern University allowed her to realize how important it was to preserve and celebrate her African American heritage. The university did not allow African Americans in swimming pools, and minimal accommodations were available for Black students. Nevertheless, she was an active composer during this time. In spite of the prejudice and discrimination Bonds faced, she found comfort in Langston Hughes’s poetry.
"I was in this prejudiced university, this terribly prejudiced place…. I was looking in the basement of the Evanston Public Library where they had the poetry. I came in contact with this wonderful poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," and I'm sure it helped my feelings of security. Because in that poem he tells how great the black man is. And if I had any misgivings, which I would have to have – here you are in a setup where the restaurants won't serve you and you’re going to college, you’re sacrificing, trying to get through school – and I know that poem helped save me". Hughes wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in 1920 while traveling to Mexico. It was published one year later in the literary journal Crisis, and again in 1926 as part of his first poetry collection "The Weary Blues."
In 1932, she wrote "Sea Ghost" which won the Wanamaker Foundation Prize. She also received a Rosenwald Fellowship (1933), which enabled her to finish her Master's degree in music. The next year, Bonds performed Florence Price's "Piano Concerto in E" with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the 1933 Worlds' Fair. She became the first African American performer in that organization’s history. She would return in 1934 to perform Piano Concerto in D Minor composed by former teacher, Florence Price. After receiving both her Bachelor of Music (1933) and Master of Music (1934) degrees in piano and composition, Bonds went on to a successful career writing pieces for the Glenn Miller Orchestra and regularly performing on the radio.
Although Bonds was educated as a classical musician, her work was versatile and strongly influenced by jazz and blues. Her compositions were performed by a large number of concert artists including Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman. In 1936, Margaret Bonds founded the Allied Arts Academy, where she taught art, music, and ballet in Chicago. Soon after the short lived attempt of the Allied Arts Academy, Margaret, realizing that she wanted to be publish her compositions moved to New York City and settled in Harlem. It was here that Bonds and Hughes came face-to-face. "I actually met him," explained Bonds, "after I came out of the university." The encounter took place at the home of a mutual friend, an artist named Tony Hill. Shortly thereafter, Hughes attended one of the Sunday afternoon musicales hosted by Bonds's mother, Estella. “My family rolled out the red carpet” claimed Bonds.
In New York, Bonds began working as an editor with Clarence Williams's music publishing company, thus gaining entry into New York's popular music scene. Bonds also studied composition with American composer Roy Harris, and took piano lessons from Djane Herz at the Juilliard School of Music. She pursued lessons with Nadia Boulanger, who upon looking at her work said that she needed no further study and refused to teach her. She founded "The Margaret Bonds Chamber Music Society," whose mission was to establish a canon of music by African-American composers. Bonds helped to establish a Cultural Community Center, and served as the minister of music at a church in the area. She worked at the East Side House Settlement, a nonprofit for underprivileged youth, and presented concerts of Black composers there and around New York City. Margaret also began playing piano at the Apollo Theater.
On her twenty-seventh birthday (March 3, 1940), she married Lawrence Richardson, a probation officer. Bonds and Hughes collaborations are some of the most notable of her career. Bonds set a great deal of Hughes’ poetry, and Hughes began writing librettos for Margaret’s music. Together they created "Shakespeare in Harlem" and "Three Dream Portraits" as well as other works. Bonds wrote a musical piece to accompany the Hughes poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in 1941. This partnership lasted well into the 1950s and included several larger projects such as theatrical adaptations of some of Langston Hughes’s works. Bonds’s musical scores also featured the texts of other poets including pieces for W.E.B Du Bois and Robert Frost. The song cycles from this period include, Songs of the Seasons and Three Dream Portraits, as well as music for the Hughes play, Shakespeare in Harlem.
The debut of her Christmas cantata, Ballad of the Brown King, which again used words by Hughes, premiered at East Side Settlement House and was televised by CBS in December 1960. Ballad of the Brown King tells the story of the Three Wise Men, focusing primarily on Balthazar, the so-called "brown king". An early version of the work was premiered by the George McClain Chorale (with Bonds at the piano) on December 12, 1954. A large portion of Bonds’s body of work includes modern arrangements of Black spirituals, many of which were performed by her friend, soprano Leontyne Price.
One of Bonds’ most well known settings was “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand,” composed for Price in 1963. The following year, she received the "Woman of the Century" Award and her first of three ASCAP awards. After a visit to Montgomery, Alabama in 1963, Bonds wrote "The Montgomery Variations", a seven-movement work based on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” Bonds penned a program for the work which explains that it centered on Southern Blacks' decision no longer to accept the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow South. She dedicated this piece and her Christmas Cantata "The Ballad of the Brown King" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bonds shared the completed work with Ned Rorem, a close friend and former student, in 1964.
Like many, she was inspired by the activism of Dr. King and engaged in benefit concerts that financed the work of Civil Rights Movement. Bonds penned a program for the work which explains that it centered on Southern Blacks' decision no longer to accept the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow South, focusing on the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, Bonds remained a staunch advocate for social justice. Bonds became a tireless promoter of Black artists featuring the works of Black composers and poets.
Throughout the 1960s Bonds served on the music committee to establish the Harlem Cultural Community Center, organized the Harlem Jazz Mobile, and lectured on African-American music at nearby universities. The death of Langston Hughes in 1967 was difficult for Bonds to accept. Afterwards, Margaret moved to Los Angeles, leaving behind Lawrence Richardson, her husband of 27 years, and their 21-year-old daughter, Djane. She worked with the Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center and Repertory Theater, and she offered music instruction to community youths in the basement of the center. Despite her many professional successes, the personal tragedies in her life–especially the deaths of her mother in 1957 and Hughes ten years later–profoundly affected Bonds.
Her work "Credo" was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra for chorus and orchestra with text by W.E.B. DuBois, in 1972, just one month before her unexpected death at the age of 59. Throughout her career Bonds produced a wide range of work, spanning orchestral compositions, theatrical accompaniments, and traditional Black spiritual arrangements. She was the recipient of the Rosenwald Fellowship and a Rodman Wanamaker award for composition. Bonds received several honors throughout her life. She was awarded the National Association of Negro Musicians Scholarship, named to the Honor Roll of Most Distinguished Negro Women of the Century by Illinois Centennial Authority, and the Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University. Bonds composed more than two hundred pieces, including art songs, choral works, orchestral works, piano pieces, and popular songs. Bonds was a composer who wore her heart on her sleeve. She left behind a legacy of activism and artistry, paving the way for many Black musicians to follow.