Salina musician, Gayle McMillen and former Salinan, Dr. Jennifer Gordon, will present a Black History Month concert at the University United Methodist Church on February 22nd at 3:00 pm.

The concert titled, The Dunlap Exodusters – Songs of my Ancestors, will tell the story of Gordon’s ancestors who came to Kansas in 1878 and settled in Dunlap, Kansas. The concert of Negro Spirituals will include a PowerPoint presentation with narration read by Salinan, Sandra Beverly.

Gayle McMillen is a well-known Salina music educator. McMillen grew up in Clearwater, Kansas, and graduated from Clearwater High School in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Southwestern College in 1971 and earned a Master of Music Education from Wichita State University in 1976. Gayle has earned additional hours at Chapman University, Emporia State University, Kansas State University Texas Christian University, the University of Kansas, Vander Cook College, and Wichita State University. He taught two years each at South Haven, Kansas Wesleyan University, and Solomon. Gayle retired in 2005 after teaching 27 years in Salina, Kansas. While in Salina, he taught 5-12 band, jazz band, AP music theory, and team-taught full orchestra. He hosted the Roosevelt-Lincoln Invitational Band Festival for 23 years. Gayle was an adjunct teacher at Kansas Wesleyan University for 12 years after retirement from USD 305.

Dr. Gordon was born and raised in Salina, Kansas. She sang her first solo at age six on a Christmas program when she was in the first grade. She began taking voice lessons at age twelve and sang in middle, high school, college, and community choirs. Jennifer performed as a guest soloist in many Salina churches and community programs. At 19, she auditioned for the international singing group, ‘Up With People’, and was selected as a soloist to travel with a cast throughout the southwest, west, and east coasts, and Mexico. She performed with this group at Lincoln Center in New York and at The White House.

After leaving Up With People, Jennifer attended Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and was a soloist with The Friends University Singing Quakers, and a soloist with the choir at the First United Methodist Church in Wichita. Jennifer also sang with the Wichita Music Theater. She married Loring Gordon and returned to Kansas Wesleyan in 1973 to complete her B.A. in Elementary Education. While raising their family, her singing was put on hold.

Her passion for singing never waned even as her family grew. Gordon found time to take voice lessons and perform a few concerts in Salina. She trained under the late Dr Elmer Copley at Bethany College at Lindsborg with the assistance of a Horizon grant to further develop her singing voice. Over the past twenty years Gordon has sung in several Topeka churches, including University United Methodist Church, Susanna Wesley United Methodist, and Lowman United Methodist Church, where she is a member and sings in the choir there. For the past two years she has also sang with the Community Gospel Choir of Topeka.

Gordon truly enjoys creating and performing vocal music programs that present music of the African American experience. Her program of The Life and Times of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been well received at several colleges and churches in Kansas. This program was presented at Kansas Wesleyan University in 2023. She also has performed A Concert of Negro Spirituals at the Smoky Hill Museum in Salina that coincided with one of their featured exhibits, Climbing Jacobs Ladder: The Rise of Black Churches in Eastern American Cities, 1740-1877.