Singer Roberta Flack revered as North Carolina ‘influencer’

You can’t classify vocalist Roberta Flack, a native of the Old North State, as an “unsung” hero by any means. She had a string of No. 1 hit songs – mainly during the 1970s – and was a major player in the entertainment industry.

Roberta Flack was also an “influencer” of great magnitude, and her impact on one community in eastern North Carolina had gone largely “unwritten about” for many years.

Thanks to Mark Kemp, who retired recently as a senior editor at Our State magazine, for detailing Roberta Flack’s contributions to Farmville, N.C., a town in Pitt County. His article was published in the May 2025 issue.

 

Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born in Buncombe County, N.C., in 1937. 

Her parents were Laron LeRoy Flack and Irene Margaret Council Flack. The family lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Montreat and Black Mountain, along Flat Creek, a tributary of the Swannanoa River.

 

Laron Flack was a jazz pianist and harmonica player. Irene Flack was the church organist, and Roberta, beginning at age 3 often accompanied her mother to choir practice.

Roberta said: “There was me at the keys…picking out hymns we would sing like “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”

The Flacks moved to Virginia when Roberta was 5, settling in Alexandria. A few years later, as Roberta’s dad was walking home from work one day, he spotted an “old, ratty, beat-up, weather-worn, faded” upright piano in a junkyard. The junkyard man said: “Take it; it’s free.”

Laron and Irene cleaned and tuned that piano and painted it a “beautiful grassy green.” Young Roberta was so excited she “couldn’t wait for the paint to dry.”

(That memory never faded. “The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music” was published in 2023 as a children’s story, co-written by Roberta Flack and Tonya Bolden.)

 

Roberta Flack honed her skills as a pianist at Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Arlington.  

In 1952, at age 15, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University in Washington, D.C., becoming one of the youngest students ever to enroll at Howard.

She was studying music in graduate school at Howard in 1959 when her father died unexpectedly at age 47. Roberta needed to find work to help support her mother and siblings.

A Howard classmate, Clarence Knight Jr., a saxophonist, knew that H.B. Sugg School in his hometown of Farmville, needed a choir director and English teacher. Roberta applied and got the job in 1959.

 

One of her students that year was 11-year-old Alma Hobbs. Miss Flack had the ability to build a choir with “students who may not have been the greatest singers, but who nonetheless had something to offer a choir,” Hobbs said.

“Her philosophy was that everyone does not have to be the best singer; a choir needs all voices to blend together,” said Hobbs, who was a “blender-inner.”

 

“Miss Flack taught in Farmville for just one year,” Hobbs said, “but she made an incredible difference.”

So did Herman Bryan (H.B.) Sugg, Miss Flack’s principal at the segregated school that was named in his honor. His role in advancing the education of African-Americans in Pitt County was herculean.

 

Roberta Flack returned to the Washington, D.C., area in 1960 and taught music in several junior high schools. She started to perform evenings and weekends in local nightclubs. Henry Yaffe hired Roberta Flack in 1968 to sing at Mr. Henry’s Restaurant on Capitol Hill.

“She told me that if I could give her work three nights a week, she could quit teaching,” Yaffe recalled.

Smart move on his part.

Here's more about Roberta Flack and Alma Hobbs:

Dr. Alma Cobb Hobbs of Farmville, N.C., served 36 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and retired in 2013 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Administration. 

She is a graduate of North Carolina Central University in Durham and earned her master’s and doctorate degrees from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

“Over my career, I often served as the first African-American or female in the positions I held. After the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act, I worked to integrate USDA county offices and took the first group of black 4-H youth to compete in a state completion. Previously, 4-H competitions were segregated and did not recognize black 4-H groups,” Dr. Hobbs said.

“I later became the first African-American to hold a senior executive position in USDA’s Extension Service. Agriculture is typically a male-dominated career, so it was significant when I was selected as the first woman to serve as an Extension Administrator at Tennessee State University in Nashville.”

Dr. Hobbs was the first woman to serve as Dean of Agriculture at Virginia State University at Ettrick in Chesterfield County, Va.

She currently serves as a member of the Board of Commissioners for the Town of Farmville.

 

When interviewed about her former teacher Roberta Flack at H.B. Sugg School, Dr. Hobbs told Lori Drake, a local freelance writer: “When I first met Miss Flack, she looked too young to be a teacher. We thought she looked like a movie star, and she could really play the piano.”

“She shared her love of music with us and introduced us to spirituals and classical melodies and all kinds of music. Everyone had the opportunity to learn and to understand music appreciation.”

According to Dr. Hobbs, the school choirs participated in a number of music competitions during Flack’s tenure, and they won every one of them.

“She was an amazingly talented teacher and choir director,” Dr. Hobbs continued. It was a blessing knowing that I had the opportunity to interact with an extraordinary musical talent who became a legendary composer, musician and artist.”

“She recognized that everyone had gifts at different levels but she allowed all of us to have the experience of music. I was so inspired by her that when I went to college, I minored in music,” Dr. Hobbs said.