In 1892, the master Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, teaching in New York City, prophesied that the melodies of African-American musical genres would inspire a “great and noble school” of American classical music. But the Black musical motherlode instead fostered popular genres known the world over; American composers mainly squandered the opportunity at hand. A modernist “standard narrative,” popularized by Aaron Copland, kept a distance from the vernacular. Joseph Horowitz, in Dvorak’s Prophecy, proposes a “new paradigm” privileging Charles Ives, George Gershwin, and Black classical music. The recent excavation of Black composers includes Harry Burleigh – with whose “Deep River” Black classical music begins. Our program includes Sidney Outlaw singing Burleigh; John McWhorter reconsidering Gershwin; and Allen Guelzo exploring Ives and the Civil War. The larger endeavor is to embed American classical music in the larger narrative of American culture.