Afton Battle’s sudden exit from Fort Worth Opera sparks debate about gender, equity

When Afton Battle resigned last week as head of Fort Worth Opera, the news caused a stir among opera leaders, musicians and patrons in North Texas and beyond. This week, they’re not done talking — and for good reason. Battle was one of the first Black women ever to lead a U.S. opera company. Her pledge, she said shortly after accepting the position in 2020, was to bolster Fort Worth Opera’s commitment to inclusivity and diversity. That goal, according to Battle, came with its fair share of obstacles. “Y’all know the challenges of being Black in this world,” she wrote in a June 30 post on Facebook. “Magnify that with being a woman running an arts organization in a conservative city and state. “Running this company hasn’t been easy, y’all. And [I’m] sure you can guess why.” Those who cheered Battle’s arrival as general director now point to her departure as evidence of a failed commitment to racial justice, the kind many legacy arts groups made, at least nominally, after the murder of George Floyd.

Others have criticized her for what they see as mismanagement of the oldest continually performing opera company in Texas, at a time when arts groups across the country have been fighting to survive. Particularly worrying to some former board members The Dallas Morning News spoke with in the months before Battle’s resignation was her decision to add a page on the company’s website supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. “We hired her to be general director, not the voice of activism,” said Whit Smith, a former board member who was on the search committee that hired Battle. He left the company in 2021, and since then has not attended any Fort Worth Opera performances nor donated to the company. “And that’s the way it sat with me.” Neither Smith nor Kris Lindsay, another former board member who served on the search committee, are on social media, where they might have become aware of Battle’s activism, Lindsay said. The opera is “an arts organization, not a political organization,” Lindsay added. And it’s “trying to reach everyone, not just one group.” Kenney Elkomous, a board member at Arts Administrators of Color Network, fired back on Facebook: “It’s amazing that the former board members who went on record had the GALL to say that the arts aren’t political. And just the way they talk about Afton is extremely condescending and patronizing. They make it seem like Afton performed some kind of bait and switch between her interviews for the job and her tenure.”