Politics of the Beat: Jazz & Civil rights

As discussed previously, jazz was used as a political tool to disrupt cultural uniformity ascribed by oppressive forces (Pearly, 2018; Jazz at Lincoln Center, "Jazz and Protest"). This method of thinking and modeling reality came about from many post-WWII developments in philosophy and politics in a decolonial movement, where the ultimate goal was to undo the oppression that had been imposed on colonized peoples and to promote self sufficiency and a revitalization of those peoples (Getachew & Mantena, 2021).

Popular authors at the time like, James Baldwin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, Franz Fanon, and many others created theories and works on resisting oppression and were adopted as doctrine into real life movements for Black liberation (MHEducation, 2025).

During this time across the country, there were different beliefs on how to approach this process, namely in how violence should be applied. For example, the Black Panthers, a nationwide effort, were Marxist-Leninists who believed in self-armament, self-policing, self-sufficiency, and in a violent resistance of the powers that be. In Atlanta, we saw peaceful direct action being implemented instead by leaders like Martin Luther King, but both drew from the same theories about how class, culture, and race was used against them to know where to put the heat to resist oppression (Wright, 2008).

All the way back into the 20s, jazz music was used by artists like Louis Armstrong to critique racism and was used to outline the experience of being Black in America. Jazz music has been used for years as protest music. Charles Mingus wrote scathing pieces against segregation in schools, Armstrong went on to tell the United States State Department that he would not represent the nation overseas until they, “straighten out that mess down south… They’ve been ignoring the Constitution” (Jazz at Lincoln Center, "Jazz and Protest").

This is why jazz music had both a powerful voice but also had powerful draw for organizing those youth that wanted to make change. College aged Americans across racial and gender boundaries were one of the driving forces behind the Civil Rights Movement; often young people were those putting themselves on the line for sit-ins, for protest, violent and non-violent, and were those taking lots of the blow on the frontlines of the movement by taking arrests, beatings from police, etc. (Library of Congress, "Youth...", 2015). Jazz festivals were often put together to raise money for the cause, to bring open minded people together who would be open to change, who were open to jazz, and therefore open to supporting the movement. Speakers like Martin Luther King Jr. Used these festivals and shows often as platforms for their message, as the two movements ran perfectly in tandem with each other (Jackson, 2019).