Editing W. C. Handy (section)

=== Early years ===
[[File:WC Handy age 19 handyphoto10.jpg|thumb|Handy at age 19]]In September 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching exam. He passed it easily and gained a teaching job at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical College (the current-day [[Alabama A&M University]]) in [[Normal, Alabama|Normal]], then an independent community near [[Huntsville, Alabama|Huntsville]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://blackamericaweb.com/2018/11/16/little-known-black-history-fact-w-c-handy/|title=Little Known Black History Fact: W.C. Handy|date=November 16, 2018|work=Black America Web |access-date=November 16, 2018}}</ref> Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby [[Bessemer, Alabama|Bessemer]].

In his time off from his job, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read music. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming [[World's Columbian Exposition|World's Fair in Chicago]], they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago and then learned that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found no work.<ref name=":0" />[[File:WCHandy w A&M College band 1900.jpg|thumb|Handy, ca. 1900, director of the Alabama Agriculture & Mechanical College Band]]

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to [[Evansville, Indiana]]. He played the cornet in the [[World's Columbian Exposition|Chicago World's Fair]] in 1893. In Evansville, he joined a successful band that performed throughout neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist, and trumpeter. At the age of 23, he became the bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.

In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and on to Cuba, Mexico and Canada.<ref name=":0" /> Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in [[Henderson, Kentucky]], Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900, after they had settled in Florence.

Around that time, [[William Hooper Councill]], the president of State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in Huntsville (which became Alabama A&M University), the same college Handy had refused to teach at in 1892 due to low pay, hired Handy to teach music. He became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". He felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.