[Dixielandjazz] Questions about laws regarding musicians andsegregation

[Charles Suhor]

The Civil Rights Law of 1964 under Pres. Lyndon Johnson effectively made segregation illegal throuhhout the nation. To see the range of the law, go to https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/the-civil-rights-act-of-1964. Prior to that there were many court cases about segregation in particular areas (education, transportation, etc.) , with varying outcomes (e.g., Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v Board of Education) but the sweeping 1974 law was the watershed event. It didn't put an end to racial prejudice, of course.

New Orleans, as usual, marched to different drummers. My brother Don and I played from the late 40s into the desegregation years. The New Orleans Jazz Club (esp. Doc Souchon) flaunted the law often with impunity, as did Sid Davilla at his Bourbon Street club and modern jazz cats like Benny Clement, Earl Palmer, Bill Huntington, Al Belletto, Mike Serpas, Don, and me (but the the cops beat Mike up one night for sitting in with a black band). There were others, I'm sure, but I can't recall them now, and there were many I didn't know about. It was less risky for whites to sit in with blacks because the police weren't hip enough to know the black sites. The issue is treated at several points in my book Jazz in New Orleans: the Postwar Years through 1960. Jason Berry's terrific new comprehensive history of New Orleans, City of a Million Dreams, includes a lot about the city's complex race relations over 300 years.

I now live in Montgomery, Alabama, which of course has a deep history of slavery and, since the 1950s, a brilliant civil rights history. Everywhere, this is a work in progress, challenged by the re-emergence of hate groups. We keep pluggin'. 

Charles


> On Nov 11, 2019, at 3:10 PM, philwilking <philwilking at cox.net> wrote:
> 
> I am not a lawyer, but I am from Louisiana and I am old enough to have lived through the period which (officially) ended segregation by race in the USA.ASl BNelletto, Don a,md met
> To your second and last questions:.
> 
> A source of confusion is that each state (indeed, each jurisdiction [city, county, etc.]) had its own segregation laws and regulations, all different, all enforced with different strictness, and the federal government had its own such laws and regulations, also enforced variously in different places. Some of these laws were in place before the American Revolutionary War, and that's just in the British colonies; the other European colonies had their own laws.
> 
> In the late nineteenth century, a U.S. Supreme Court decision had upheld the proposition that requiring racial separation of public facilities (schools, public waiting rooms, etc.) complied with the U.S. Constitution, so long as the separate facilities were "equal." Note that this applied only to "public" facilities. An interesting "wrinkle:" a private club which owned its own building might restrict its membership and entrance to its clubhouse however it saw fit. This is still so, BUT - the instant it rents out any part of the building to any non-member for any purpose that building has become a "public" facility and must admit anyone.
> 
> Officially, this started to change in the late 1940's. President Truman ordered the military to desegregate. Kicking, screaming, and whining they (slowly) obeyed.
> In the very late 1940's, some people in the State of Kansas got so tired of the inferior education provided in the public schools for Negro (the term used at the time) children that they went to court and maintained that separate facilities by their very nature CAN'T be equal, and in practice certainly ARE not. When the suit reached the Supreme Court on appeal, that court agreed and thereby made all "separate but equal" laws invalid in the USA.
> 
> In practice, this has not ended segregation, because now each alleged case must be the subject of its own lawsuit. Please note that these cases happen all across the USA, not just in the old "Deep South." I vividly recall overhearing a "black" fellow worker on the telephone 30 years ago. He was moving from New York to Virginia. I couldn't resist asking why he would voluntarily go to Virginia, given the prevailing racial attitudes. His answer was: "At least they are honest about it there."
> 
> So the short answer to question 2 is "No.." The answer to question 4 is some segregation laws in the USA have existed since "colonial times," and the process of ending them began seriously in the late 1940's and continues today.
> 
> Others are more qualified to take on your remaining questions.
> 
> Phil Wilking - K5MZF
> www.nolabanjo.com
> 
> "Only two things are infinite:
> the Universe and Human Stupidity.
> And I am not sure about the Former."
> Albert Einstein
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Bert
> 
> So, to me this leads to questions:
> 
> was it officially forbidden for white and black musicians to share a stage? If yes, was it actively enforced? (Like prohobition, it was law, but not all the States did actually enforce the law)
> was it the same in all the states?
> To share a stage during jam sessions was not illegal for musicians from different backgrounds?
> is there a certain timeframe when these regulations/laws started/ended?
> 
> Any help on these questions would be greatly appreciated,
> 
> Bert Brandsma 
> 
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