Louis Armstrong, Jazz, and the Civil Rights Movement

Little Rock Arkansas

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Using Music to fight racism

• In September 1957, Armstrong first spoke publicly about race relations in America two weeks after the incident at Little Rock
• “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country,”
• President Dwight Eisenhower, he charged, was “two faced”, and had “no guts”.
• Faubus, Armstrong was an “uneducated plow boy”.
• At that time, Armstrong had been contemplating a goodwill tour to the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department, which he duly canceled. The FBI tracked Armstrong's activity after his cancellation of the Russian tour and because of his public call for change.
• The article ran all over the country and reaction was swift.
• “I said what somebody should have said a long time ago,” Armstrong said.
• However there were calls for boycotts of his concerts and the Ford Motor Company threatened to pull out of a Bing Crosby special on which Armstrong was to appear.

‘The true revolutionary is one that’s not apparent. I mean the revolutionary that’s waving a gun out in the streets is never effective; the police just arrest him. But the police don’t ever know about the guy that smiles and drops a little poison in their coffee. Well Louis, in that sense, was that sort of revolutionary, a true revolutionary’ – Lester Bowie

Armstrong’s public assertion of his full individuality, celebrating his African-American heritage, constituted a political act with far greater meaning and impact than anything he might have done in a voting booth or on a speaker’s podium.

Avrell Shaw, Armstrong’s bassist – ‘Louis was the first man I heard to say, “ you’re black, be proud of it. You’re black, you’re bot white, you’re not yellow, you’re black – be proud of it.’

Armstrong called into question the stereotype of the African-American as an inferior imitator.

Louis Armstrong supported equality not primarily through the use of political lyrics, though he sang such lyrics on occasion. Nor did he do so through his public statements about race, though they had an impact. Instead, he supported civil rights through his music.

In 1929 he recorded “(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue?,”

My only sin

Is in my skin

What did I do

To be so black and blue?

‘But while they’re listening to our music, they don’t think about trouble. What’s more they’re watching Negro and White musicians play side by side. And we bring contentment and pleasure. I always say, ‘Look at the nice taste we leave. It’s bound to mean something. That’s what music is for.’

He was not naive enough to think of music as the answer to racism, but he thought it could have lasting effects on some.

-Used his minstrel persona as a weapon against racism

-On tour he also insisted that he be allowed to stay at luxury hotels from which black had been excluded

BUT

-Needed white support to survive – to have been openly confrontational it would have threatened his life.

Issues with Armstrong

In 1964, at the Berlin Jazz Festival, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the opening address

African-American and White musicians were not allowed to perform together

Jazz musicians took up the cause, using their celebrity and their music to promote racial equality and social justice.

• Boston's Savoy Cafe was the only place in the city where Whites and African-Americans regularly played and were in the audience.

• ‘”Satchmo” ran around the stage, back hunched, mugging and grinning, bulging his eyes like a black face minstrel while singing sentimental songs about the south’ - came to be seen as an embarrassing Uncle Tom figure.
• Took away from their struggle for respect.
• Armstrong’s minstrelsy could be seen as a kind of self-abasement designed to get the approval of whites.
• Musicians like Dizzie Gillespie chastised him for his ‘plantation image’. - convenient reinforcement for the racial prejudices of the white listeners .
• Armstrong at times seemed to support the view that he was unconcerned with civil rights and segregation

Following are just a few cases in which jazz musicians spoke out for civil rights.

'Jazz speaks for life.'

'The blues tell the story of life's difficulties and, if you think for a moment , you realize that to take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come with some new hope of sense triumph. That is the triumph of music.'

• Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke played together in Chicago in the 1920s

Benny Goodman

Importance of Jazz

Beginnings

• preeminent white bandleader and clarinetist
• the first to hire a black musician to be part of his ensemble, in 1935
• These steps helped push for racial integration in jazz, which was previously not only taboo, but even illegal in some states and made national news

• When jazz became solely about the about the music and the musicians who played it, jazz became symbolically linked with the Civil Rights Movement.
• The music appealed to whites and African-Americans alike, where a musician was judged on ability alone.

Louis Armstrong, Jazz and The Civil Rights Movement

Born in New Orleans on August 4th 1901

Spent his youth in poverty

Carnival Lifestyle - joy at the center and disdained boundaries that limited pleasure

Saw racism from a young age

Always feared racist violence

• Civil Rights could have been accomplished without the assistance of music, however its influences inspired thousands.

Duke Ellington

Music

As a musician Armstrong was a revolutionary, however this is less true politically

• First hit song was in 1926; one of his last was ‘Hello Dolly’ in 1967,
• The fame allowed him to break some racial barriers, i becoming the first African American pop star
• Transformed American music, bringing African-American elements to its center for the first time.
• Paved the way for the richer pop music of Crosby and Sinatra, jazz singing, rhythm and blues, and an interracial hybrid called Rock and roll

Louis Armstrong

Renowned trumpet player and singer

Goodwill ambassador

movie star

Prolific writer

Collage artist

• Many felt that an African-American man of such esteem should be more outspoken
• He even refused to join Martin Luther King’s 1963 march on Washington, D.C.
• His contracts always stipulated that he would not play before segregated audiences.
• He referred to jazz as “African-American classical music,” and strove to convey the black experience in America.
• He was a figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

He did not talk about the Civil Rights movement until 1957

He never marched or made appearances with civil rights leaders

'I don't get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.'