How did Jazz influence the Civil Movement?

I'm doing a research paper for my English class on the topic 'how did jazz influence the civil movement'. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about the Civil movements of the 1930's (not even sure on the year) nor do I know much about Jazz. I need a basic summary to help me get started on my paper and any help will be greatly appreciated.|||From the days of bebop, when jazz ceased to cater to popular audiences, and instead became solely about the music and the musicians who played it, jazz has been symbolically linked to the civil rights movement. The music, which appealed to whites and blacks alike, provided a culture in which the collective and the individual were inextricable, and in which one was judged by his ability alone, and not by race or any other irrelevant factors. “Jazz,” Stanley Crouch writes, “predicted the civil rights movement more than any other art in America.”


Not only was jazz structured similarly to ideals of the civil rights movement. Jazz musicians took up the cause, using their celebrity and their music to promote racial equality and social justice. Below are just a few cases in which jazz musicians spoke out for civil rights.





Louis Armstrong





Although sometimes criticized by activists and black musicians for playing into an “Uncle Tom” stereotype by performing for mainly white audiences, Louis Armstrong often had a subtle way of dealing with racial issues. In 1929 he recorded “(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue?,” a song from a popular musical. The lyrics include the phrase:








My only sin


Is in my skin


What did I do


To be so black and blue?


The lyrics, out of the context of the show, and sung by a black performer in that period, were a risky and weighty commentary.





Armstrong became a cultural ambassador for the U.S. during the cold war, performing jazz all over the world. In response to increasing turmoil swirling around the desegregation of public schools, Armstrong was outspokenly critical of his country. After the 1957 Little Rock Crisis, when the National Guard prevented nine black students from entering a high school, Armstrong canceled a tour to the Soviet Union, and said publicly, “the way they’re treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell....