Jazz and Civil Rights

The coming week holds two events that remind us of the struggle for racial equality: Monday, January 19th is Martin Luther King Day, and Tuesday, January 20th we will inaugurate our first black president.

The events have inspired reflection on the links between jazz and the civil rights movement. Nat Hentoff discusses how jazz musicians used their exposure to speak out for equality in "How Jazz Helped Hasten the Civil-Rights Movement," and Stanley Crouch talks about the symbolic importance of jazz in the civil rights movement in "Obama's One Cat Who Needs to Put Jazz on His Party Menu."

In honor of next week's events, I've created a profile of the involvement of jazz musicians in the civil rights movement, from Billie Holiday's performances of "Strange Fruit" to Max Roach's We Insist! Freedom Now Suite and Charles Mingus' "Fables of Faubus."

Related:

• Louis Armstrong
• Duke Ellington
• John Coltrane
• Max Roach

Image Courtesy of Candid Records