In Houston, in 1955, this was unprecedented. Despite the historic Brown vs Board of Education ruling the previous year, which overturned the farcical ‘separate but equal’ Plessy vs Ferguson ruling of 1896, which the southern states of the US used as justification for segregating blacks and whites in all areas of public life, Houston was still a divided city. The concert took place nine years before the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Johnson, effectively ending legal segregation, and fourteen years before the Texas State Legislature enacted its own desegregation laws, in 1969.Mixed race audiences had been enjoying jazz concerts together for some time in a few cities in the North, where segregation, although not legally sanctioned was in de facto operation in most areas of society. The 1955 JATP gig is widely recognised as the first desegregated concert in Houston. Granz, who saw the potential of jazz to advance the cause of civil rights, had hired the venue and knew he had such an attractive line-up that he could dictate his terms. He insisted that the “White” and “Negro” signs be removed from the toilets. Tickets were sold on a first-come-first-served basis, regardless of colour, and there were no advance sales, preventing anyone from block-booking seats and allocating them to whites only. Some white audience members objected to being seated next to blacks – Granz gave them their money back and asked them to leave.
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| L-R: Ella Fitzgerald, her assistant Georgiana Henry, Illinois Jaquet and Dizzy Gillespie at Houston Police Station. |
The audiences that major black jazz musicians attracted, from across the social spectrum, helped break down barriers between communities in the USA, from the 1920s onwards. Music has often been ahead of its time when it comes to social change. With its roots in the music of slaves brought from Africa to North America, jazz music was intrinsically entwined with the struggle for equality, but its popularity amongst a wide range of people brought integration to its audiences before many other areas of society.
American folk music also played a key role in the civil rights movement, as well as in anti-Vietnam War protests in the US. In Eastern Europe, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania, traditional folk music was used as a form of defiance against the Soviet puppet governments. It’s not always the obvious political songs and artists that spark the significant transformations. Sometimes, the simple act of bringing a crowd together for a shared musical experience can be potent enough to push forward new social agendas. Few jazz songs and pieces were explicitly about the civil rights movement. It’s the grassroots music, the music in our souls, that moves us and lets us share a common bond with those around us, that is the most powerful.
So don’t despair about today’s pop musicians. They may not appear to be singing protest songs, but their music is shaping the minds of a generation of young people. With the advent of the internet and the availability of recording equipment, the music scene has changed radically in the last decade, but we should not doubt the power of music to unify, and to be ahead of its time. The musicians who took to the stage in Houston, way back in 1955, came to play good music, not to change the world. Yet good music is, whether it knows it or not, one of the first steps towards that goal.
Merry Christmas, folks!
