Warner T. Lawson was a musician and educator born in 1903 in Hartford, Connecticut. His parents were also musicians—his father, Raymond Augustus Lawson, was a pianist, and his mother was a vocalist with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. He attended Fisk University on a Juilliard scholarship before returning to Connecticut to study at the Yale School of Music. He received a BA in music from Yale in 1929. Following his graduation from Yale, he returned to Fisk University and was head of its music department. In 1936, he became head of the music department at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, North Carolina, and in 1942 was appointed Dean of the School of Music at Howard University. Lawson died in 1971.