Clarence Cameron White (1880-1960) was born in Tennessee, took violin lessons from Will Marion Cook and Joseph Douglas and attend Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and traveled abroad to study with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He was a composer, performer, teacher, serving as head of the string department of the Washington Conservatory of Music. In the 1920s he served as president of the National Association of Negro Musicians, an organization he helped to establish in 1919.