D. Antoinette Handy

Dorothy Antoinette Handy-Miller (1930 – 2002) was an American flautist, music scholar, arts administrator, and writer. She was one of the first black members of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, where she was a flautist from 1966 to 1976, and also performed with the Paris Orchestre International, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Symphony of the Air, and the Symphony of the New World. Handy was the Director of Music at the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D.C., establishing the National Jazz Service Organization and the National Jazz Network. She served on the faculty, as a professor of music, at the New York College of Music, Florida A&M University, Virginia State College, Virginia Union University, the Tuskegee Institute, and Jackson State University.

Early life, family, and education Handy was born in 1930 in New Orleans to Rev. William Talbot Handy and Dorothy Pauline Pleasant Handy. Her father was a Methodist minister and trained singer, and her mother was a music teacher. She was the great-great-granddaughter of Mississippi Supreme Court justice and slaveowner Ephraim G. Peyton and of American Civil War veteran and Mississippi state legislator Emanuel Handy.

She began studying the flute as a child. She attended Spelman College before earning a bachelor's degree in 1952 from the New England Conservatory of Music and a master's degree in 1953 from Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music. She was a flautist with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra from 1966 until 1976, later forming the chamber group Trio Pro Viva with the cellist Ulysses Kirskey and the pianist Russel Wilson.

She was named a Ford Foundation Fellow in 1971, researching black music in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Personal life Handy was married to Calvin Miller, a political science professor, and had three children. Handy died on October 21, 2002, from Parkinson's disease.