From SLAVERY to JAZZ
Historical background
In our minds slavery evokes African people who
used to be abducted and exchanged for goods. Most of
the time they were captured in Africa to be put to
work in America or in Europe. There could be as many
as twelve people living together.
Slaves worked from sunrise to
sunset, they were only granted very
little time to eat and they could be
sold at any time; families could be
split up when a mother was sold to an
owner while her children were sold to
another one.
JAZZ IN BLACK AND WHITE
Jazz evolved in a context of segregation
and racist attitudes.
Louis ARMSTRONG
was born in New Orleans which boasted the
largest cotton and slave markets in the world.
When Armstrong's ancestors, and other slaves
like them, were finally freed, they were
unemployed so they were no better-off.
His first experience with Jim CROW
The day when he saw segregation in practice aboard a trolley.
“I saw the signs on the backs of the seats which read: FOR WHITE
PASSENGERS ONLY.
"What do those signs says?" I asked.
"Don't ask so many questions! Shut your mouth, you little fool and sit where
you belong!"
The vision of whites that Louis received from his elders was a legacy of
slavery, malice, jealousy, and hate dividing the races.
But it was not the legacy he would transmit.
If he had been a poet he could have written the following poem:
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was a well-known black poet during the Harlem Renaissance in
the 1920s. One of his most famous poem,“ the Negro Speaks of Rivers “, by referring
to four of the world's largest and historically most prominent rivers presents a
timeline of the African-American experience throughout history. Even though the
Congo and the Mississippi both hold bitter connotations of the slave trade, each of
the four rivers has contributed to the depth of the Negro's soul. The poem
highlights triumph over adversity and the 'muddy bosom' of the Mississippi turns
golden.
So, more than a tribute to the heritage of the past, this poem honors the
wisdom and strength which allowed African-Americans to survive in the face of all
adversity.
too!
No doubt Louis Armstrong's soul had grown deep like the rivers
The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise
Little Rock's Segregation Battle
On the night of Sept. 17, 1957, two weeks after the Little Rock Nine
were first barred from Central High School, Louis Armstrong happened
to be on tour with his All Stars band in Grand Forks.
“It’s getting almost so
bad a colored man hasn’t
got any country!”
“The way they are treating my people in
the South, the government can go to
hell,”
As Mr. Armstrong prepared to play that night, members of the
Arkansas National Guard ringed the school in Little Rock, ordered to
keep the black students out.
Central High School was open, but the black children stayed home.
A journalist who was interviewing Louis Armstrong soon brought up
Little Rock, and he could not believe what he heard. “It’s getting almost
so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country,” a furious Louis
Armstrong told him. “President Eisenhower,” he charged, was “two
faced,” and had “no guts.”
Then, Louis Armstrong bitterly recounted some of his experiences
touring in the Jim Crow South. He then sang the opening bar of “The
Star-Spangled Banner,” inserting obscenities into the lyrics.
Louis Armstrong had been contemplating a good-will tour to the
Soviet Union for the State Department.
“They ain’t so cold but what we couldn’t bruise them with happy
music,” he had said. Now, though, he confessed to having second
thoughts.
“The way they are treating my people in the South, the
government can go to hell,” he said, offering further choice words
about the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles.
“The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country.
What am I supposed to say?”
“I’m white...inside...but, that don’t help my case
That’s life...can’t hide...what is in my face
How would it end...ain’t got a friend
My only sin...is in my skin
What did I do...to be so black and blue”
Black and Blue
Louis Armstrong
Little girl going to a desegregated school accompanied by US Marshals because of threatening,
violent white mobs.
Painting by Norman Rockwell : The Problem We All Live With