Note: Lifestyle Editor Ken Abrams prepared this piece at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2015. We’re releasing an edited version again today as the 2021 festival comes to an end.
Daily headlines remind us that the nation still grapples with its legacy of slavery, prejudice and discrimination. The Newport Jazz Festival (along with its sister festival Newport Folk) was designed as a unifying event where artists and fans can escape the world around them and simply enjoy the music.
How did the Newport Jazz Festival, which took place in a bastion of privileged white society, a city that was once at the center of a thriving slave trade, became a place where barriers were broken and the festival a catalyst for? emerging civil rights movement?
Jazz and civil rights
“Jazz,” wrote critic Stanley Crouch, “predicted the civil rights movement more than any other art in America.”
From the beginning, jazz music was linked to the struggle for equality for African Americans.
Newport jazz favorite Louis Armstrong once sang:
“My only sin is in my skin
What have I done to be so black and blue. “
Louis Armstrong
Louis ArmstrongIn the 1930s, clarinetist Benny Goodman was the first great white bandleader to incorporate his band and refuse to play in isolated areas of the country. Duke Ellington followed suit and turned down shows in front of separate audiences.
Of course, Billie Holidays anti-lynch classic “Strange Fruit” from 1939 brought the subject to the fore. The text (written by New York school teacher Abel Meeropol) contrasts lynched bodies hanging on a tree with the sweet scent of magnolias:
“Southern trees bear strange fruits,
Blood on the leaves and blood on the roots,
Black bodies swing in the south wind
Strange fruits hang from the poplars. “
Songs like this influenced the civil rights movement that began in 1954 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her Montgomery, Alabama, seat that December evening. The first annual Newport Jazz Festival took place earlier this year.
Newport Jazz and Civil Rights
In the 1950s, racism was less open in New England than in the south, but it was certainly a way of life in the City by the Sea, once a major port for the slave trade. In fact, America’s first vacation spot did not welcome African Americans, and hotel arrangements were difficult due to unwritten (but widespread) racial segregation policies.
At the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, black and white concertgoers mingled on stage, in the crowd, and in town – but not in most hotels, inns, and restaurants. As a result, it was discussed to move the festival to “less isolated areas” such as Providence or New York City.
“Newport was kind of a southern town because of the naval base. At least half of the officers came from the south. They really believed in segregation, white supremacy, that’s how they grew up, ”said festival founder George Wein in an interview in 2015.
George Wein
George Wein“In the first year of the festival there was a reluctance to rent hotel rooms to African Americans. We had to move some of the people who showed up into private apartments. In the second year that had changed. A few years later, Newport elected an African American to be the city’s mayor. I think we had an impact on that, ”explained Wein. (In 1981, Paul Gaines became the first elected African American mayor of a Rhode Island city.)
The festival raised an awareness that would influence the civil rights movement. Wein himself, married to an African American woman, exemplified social justice in his personal and professional life.
In his award-winning biography Myself Among Others, Wein wrote: “Inclusion and civil rights were my lifestyle. I had not participated in street demonstrations or protests at the lunch counter; I had been at the forefront of the struggle in a more personal, less confrontational sense. “
“In my personal case, I grew up in my school with a lot of anti-Semitism on my face. I was married to Joyce, an African American, for over 46 years; My family was initially afraid that it would ruin my life, but for me it was exactly the opposite, it shaped my life. People felt that we represented some kind of ideal, which I think we did. “
Wein’s goal was to do great concerts, not necessarily to promote civil rights directly, but he and the festival did just that. In New Orleans, where he produced the prestigious Jazz and Heritage Festival for many years, racist practices were far more prevalent.
“I was invited there in 1962, I couldn’t even bring my wife because they had Jim Crow laws and mixed marriages were illegal. And now of course they have named a building after me, the George and Joyce Wine Jazz and Heritage Center. “
People’s and civil rights
A more direct link to the civil rights movement was at the Newport Folk Festival in the 1960s. When the Volksfest was launched (1959), many folk artists took part in the movement.
Wein spoke on this point in our interview:
“I think the Folk Festival, where we brought groups like CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) to town, was part of the great movement. When we did the finale, “We Shall Overcome,” you had 20,000 people out there doing it. “
“Next, President Lyndon Johnson said ‘We Shall Overcome’ in a speech.” (Johnson used the term in a 1965 speech in support of the voting rights law.)
Honored by Jimmy Carter in 1978 and Bill Clinton in 1993, Wein is humble to know that the Folk Festival’s unofficial anthem has become so prominent in American culture. Though it may seem insignificant today, it was quite remarkable then for a president to quote a folk song.
“The folk festival activism was extremely important to me. The festival was both a platform and a forum. My role as festival organizer was just another part of the ongoing struggle, ”explained Wein.
Ultimately, the two festivals served as a model for racial harmony. They still do this today, celebrating great music without ignoring the social problems that remain at the forefront of American life.
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