Music and Desegregation in the 1960s

Louis Armstrong

Desegregation at East Carolina involved neither court orders nor violent confrontations. Although a late-comer – other North Carolina schools desegregated in the mid-1950s – ECC avoided conflict and court injunctions largely because its leaders proactively orchestrated measured steps such as Laura Marie Leary’s entry in 1962 as the first African-American undergraduate. However, what was most distinctive about ECC’s admittedly slow path was not its avoidance of court orders but rather the pioneering roles that first-class African-American musicians, especially jazz musicians, played in crossing lines and effectively transforming campus culture.

Change began in May of 1960 with the installation of a new president, Dr. Leo W. Jenkins, who was prepared to meet the challenge of desegregation innovatively. At one with Jenkins’ progressive leadership, the student newspaper, the East Carolinian, endorsed, on January 19, 1961, what it saw as the inevitable. Its lead editorial stated, “There is no longer any real question concerning school integration. Any questions … have already been answered by federal court orders and by successfully integrated schools. Those die-hard southerners who insist on participating in contemporary ‘Greek tragedy’ will be the ones who suffer most from this point on.” The editorial added, “we pledge the support of the East Carolinian (and hope the student body will follow) to meet and accept in a rational, civilized manner the wave which is sure to come.”

Rather than dragging its feet forward, East Carolina under Jenkins’ leadership made desegregation appealing, even entertaining, via an unprecedented succession of concerts by leading African-American musicians beginning with Count Basie. From the summer of 1961 forward, a decade’s worth of world-renowned talent crossed the stages of Wright Auditorium, Christenbury Gymnasium, Ficklen Stadium, and Minges Coliseum, wowing the student body and laying bare the fallacious stereotypes of Jim Crow bigotry.

Earlier, African-American performers had been disallowed until, quite by accident, the Dave Brubeck Quartet arrived to play on campus in early 1958 with a new member, bassist Gene Wright, an African-American. Following the surprise appearance of a black musician on stage, students quickly asked whether other black performers might be booked. Pressed, the Board of Trustees responded positively, but with the proviso that the president of the college, then Dr. John D. Messick, approved the bookings. Thereafter change occurred, but not in a manner that would alter campus perceptions of African-Americans in positive ways.

The first all-black group to perform on campus was the Cavaliers, a Greenville-based “Negro combo” described in the East Carolinian as “one of the hottest musical combos to play in this section of the South.” During the summer of 1958, the group was booked by the SGA for a campus performance, and then again in the fall by the Interfraternity Council for a campus dance. Earlier, the Cavaliers had played for a Pi Kappa Alpha dance, and quickly commemorated the occasion with a new tune, “Jumping at the Pi Kappa Alpha.” However, reception for the local talent was hardly overwhelming.

Then in the fall of 1958, a Chapel Hill band, the Hot Nuts, performed, but succeeded only in shocking the audience as well as those who had promoted student turnout. East Carolina administrators quickly “banned” the group from any future performances due to the “obscenity in some of its lyrics.” Hot Nuts tunes included shockers such as “My Ding-a-ling” and “Baby Let Me Bang Your Box.” Embarrassed by the concert, the East Carolinian, which had earlier promoted it, complained of its “vulgarity,” with particular reference to “sexual contortions and body manipulations of the performers.” Following President Messick’s retirement in late 1959, a profoundly different story began to unfold.

During the Jenkins administration, the Greeks pioneered once again, this time with an exceptionally high quality act. The Interfraternity Council secured, for an off-campus performance, one of the world’s most renowned jazz bands, the Count Basie Orchestra. On April 29, 1961, Basie performed in the New Carolina Warehouse as part of the Greek Weekend’s “Bacchus Ball.” Basie’s group “completely captivated the Greeks. This was Jazz and no dissenter could be found.”

After the concert, Basie talked with students, including a reporter for the East Carolinian. When asked about the crowd, Basie responded that it was a typical college group. Regarding the warehouse, he said it was “too drafty and large. The acoustics are bad.” Reporting on Basie’s band members, the East Carolinian stated, “All Negroes, most of them had college degrees, were possessed of immense personal charm, and seemed as it were, to be a group of public relations men.” With talent, sophistication, and jazz charisma, Basie’s musicians apparently helped shatter racial caricatures that earlier cast black musicians as the stuff of minstrel show satire and mockery. When asked about the South, only one band member replied, and he with an “easy gesture” pointed to the men’s restroom marked “White Only.” He then added, “I feel that a man is a man no matter what.” With that simple yet profound note, the musician offered a pointed critique of Jim Crow irrationalities still prevalent in Greenville and most of the South.

Regardless, some students remained determined to cling to old prejudices. On May 11, 1961, the East Carolinian reported that the Kappa Alpha fraternity won the skit competition concluding Greek Week with its performance, in Austin Auditorium, of a Negro baseball game, replete with black-faced brothers playing “comic” roles. Apparently such presentations still found substantial audience approval as well.

Throwbacks to racial mockery aside, Count Basie was such a hit at the Bacchus Ball that the SGA booked his band for a concert in Wright Auditorium on July 13, 1961. When the group walked on stage in maroon dinner jackets, spontaneous applause erupted and continued for the next five minutes. When Basie asked if the group could take off their jackets due to the heat, another round of applause followed. Earlier, the band had arrived in an air-conditioned bus from Norfolk, and then had dinner in the Buccaneer Room of the College Cafeteria with members of the SGA. Basie’s penetration of campus life was unprecedented, even epochal.

After the concert, band members remained in Wright Auditorium talking to interested students for an hour before returning to Norfolk for the Virginia Beach Jazz Festival. As before, comments by band members following the show were revealing. Lead trombonist Benny Powell said of the Wright Auditorium crowd, numbering nearly two thousand, that it was “a more appreciative audience than we had at Harvard or Princeton.” Basie’s business manager Henry Snodgrass added that “the success of a group depends on the audience. Tonight, they projected to us and we tried to project right back to them.” By the time the East Carolinian article on the Wright Auditorium performance was written, Count Basie was reportedly in England performing for Queen Elizabeth. Once again, Basie and his band impressed the campus with music and personal sophistication, subtly undermining remnants of white supremacy and bigotry.

The Basie concerts elicited commentary in the East Carolinian. Managing editor J. Alfred Willis noted that jazz was reportedly the only American contribution to world culture. After sketching the history of jazz, Willis added that entertainment bookings were not simply about pleasing people or aesthetic considerations, but also had to do with “moral, ethical, and social values completely unrelated to music appreciation.” Willis observed that making such bookings and risking condemnation could lead to “a very delicate burdensome difficult situation.” He noted that there was a reason certain officials expressed concerns about “integrated entertainment.” Quoting Norman Mailer, Willis stated that “if the Negro can win his equality, he will possess a potential superiority, a superiority so feared that the fear itself has become the underground drama of domestic politics.” Willis closed by noting changes in nomenclature, from the n-word to “coloured people and capitalized Negro,” and then uncertainty, though the latter, he suggested, is a “hopeful sign for our unsureness makes us think.” Willis’ comments show that at least in the minds of some, the Basie concert had been about more than music, and that it might have gone a long way towards clarifying a new cultural estimation of African-Americans.

Yet ECC’s progress was also marred by reaction. In the fall of 1961, R&B singer Chuck Jackson was booked for the “Old South” Homecoming. Jackson disappointed an eager audience with a no-show, which was followed, unfortunately, by an effigy lynching on campus presumably carried out by disappointed fans. Nevertheless, a few weeks later the African-American folk singer Josh White was well-received in Wright Auditorium. The indefensible display of hatred earlier ended up being a relatively isolated event in an annual flow of African-American talent.

In 1961, there were still no African-American students on campus. Performers such as Count Basie and Josh White pioneered, in public ways, the integration of campus culture, even if briefly and from an elevated distance on stage. Impressive performances helped shape the thinking of students raised on old stereotypes and otherwise exposed to little else. Television was emerging as a new technology for broadcasting culture, but it remained largely segregated, as did movies and radio. Concerts brought blacks onto campus and into the limelight. The East Carolinian was not mistaken in seeing Basie’s band members as akin to public relations people because, after all, they were spreading a message that went beyond music: that there are talented, professional African-Americans capable of mesmerizing educated white audiences by the thousands. What troubled some, as Willis noted, was that perhaps they were not just equal, but superior, capable of establishing new power relations in a region accustomed to the old.

The following summer, on August 8, 1962, pop singer Johnny Nash performed in Christenbury Gymnasium. The East Carolinian included a front-page, top-fold picture of the African-American star smiling, well-groomed and dressed in coat and tie. Singer William Warfied of “Porgy and Bess” fame was the first performer in the 1962-1963 series, billed in the East Carolinian under the headline, “World Acclaimed Performer To Entertain Monday Night.” A large, two-column picture of Warfield, in suit and tie, was featured on the front page of the East Carolinian.

Coincidentally, the same issue of the student newspaper included two editorials on James Meredith’s ongoing struggle to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Without equivocation, the editorials sympathized with Meredith and condemned the obstructionism of Mississippi’s governor, Ross Barnett. It is doubtful that Basie, White, Nash, and Warfield were responsible for the support given James Meredith, but their successful interaction with East Carolina students surely stood in stark contrast with Meredith’s experiences at the University of Mississippi, another late-comer to desegregation.

Early the following year, Dave Brubeck returned, this time with his group pictured on the front page of the East Carolinian, including African-American bass player, Gene Wright. During the Brubeck Quartet’s concert in Wright Auditorium, President Leo Jenkins presented the group awards for their excellence as jazz musicians. In one picture, Jenkins is smiling after having presented Gene Wright, the African-American bassist, with a plaque honoring him. The year before, Jenkins, a native of New Jersey, had helped pioneer the desegregation of the student body by working closely with a local African-American physician, Dr. Andrew Best, with whom he was also occasionally photographed. Such pictures juxtaposing an ECC president and an African-American of any standing were, prior to this juncture, unprecedented. One of the first was of Jenkins and Gene Wright, made possible through the Dave Brubeck concert in 1963. In that moment, Jenkins modeled behavior for his student body, exemplifying the kind of human decency on which desegregation had to be grounded.

On Nov. 13, 1964, Ray Charles and the Raelets were featured artists for Homecoming, playing in Christenbury Gymnasium to a packed house. Not surprisingly, their performance garnered a standing ovation. As before, the East Carolinian’s coverage of the concert featured frontpage, top-fold two-column wide pictures of the star, in coat and tie, wearing sunglasses and with a large smile. The East Carolinian reported that never had there been such a rush for tickets as with Charles, otherwise described as “the greatest popular name entertainment to ever come to the East Carolina College campus.”

However, just a year later, East Carolina brought yet another world-renowned African-American performer to campus: on November 17, 1965, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong performed in Christenbury Gymnasium, again to a capacity crowd. Frontpage pre-concert coverage in the East Carolinian pictured Armstrong blowing his trumpet. Once more, the student body was exposed to a first-class African-American musician of indisputable greatness. With musical excellence, these African-American performances incrementally eroded old prejudices.

On May 6, 1965, the East Carolinian announced that “Mr. Dynamite” – James Brown — was coming to Greenville to perform at the Gold Leaf Warehouse. Although not a campus performance, the concert was billed as one “approved for E.C. coeds.” As with Count Basie, Josh White, Johnny Nash, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong and others before him, Brown was pictured on the frontpage of the East Carolinian, top-fold, double column width, in a full-body photo. Other than these musicians, the East Carolinian was typically devoted to the predominantly white campus. Even after the beginnings of desegregation in 1962-1963, the newspaper rarely featured an African-American student on its frontpage. Coverage of black musicians, however, appeared there annually, gradually changing the face of campus culture.

In the fall of 1965, the vocal group, The Platters, performed two nights, on November 5 and 6, 1965, in Christenbury Gymnasium. Soul-singer Jerry Butler appeared in Ficklen Stadium on Aug. 3, 1966. And on October 14, 1966 the Don Shirley Trio performed in Wright Auditorium. In each case, the East Carolinian treated the concerts as frontpage, photo-worthy headline news.

On Jan. 19, 1967 Count Basie returned for yet another concert in Wright Auditorium. Basie’s third performance in Greenville in just six years was unprecedented. His two 1961 appearances had pioneered a strategy of high-level, cultural desegregation via world-renowned talent on campus, even if for one-night performances, thereby redefining the thinking of many about race, equality, and human dignity. After Basie’s 1967 concert, the strategy continued on December 7, 1967 with Ray Charles and his orchestra, including the Raelets and Billy Preston, returning, this time to give the first concert in Minges Coliseum, delighting thousands. Two years later, the Fifth Dimension performed on November 9, 1969, following an earlier concert by singer Dionne Warwick. On March 12, 1970, Duke Ellington and his orchestra performed, and in April 1971, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue provided a “wild show,” followed later by a concert by Richie Havens. Then in 1972, Stevie Wonder came for Homecoming, followed by B.B. King, Billy Preston. The Temptations were the main attraction for Homecoming 1973. Later, Earth, Wind, and Fire also performed at East Carolina.

During these years, campus desegregation progressed slowly but surely alongside African-American concert performances. The latter, in their own way, established beyond doubt that the campus not only welcomed but appreciated expressions of African-American music and culture. However, in 1969, black students, frustrated with the pace of change and offended by persistent displays of prejudice and insensitivity, drafted a set of demands calling for greater African-American presence in the faculty, student body, and curriculum. One request pertained to music: the students demanded that “Dixie” no longer be performed at campus events. When put to a referendum, the campus vote favored banning “Dixie.”

Another byproduct of black activism was the first ECU celebration of “Black History Week” in February 1969. Participating in the occasion, the East Carolinian published several essays on black history, black power, and black music. In “God and Music,” Janice McNeil suggested that after God, music was “the Black Man’s second heart.” McNeil then presented a survey of the history of black music, noting the contributions of figures such as Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, and Duke Ellington. The East Carolinian also included, in another piece, the words of the black “national anthem,” “Lift Every Voice,” by James W. Johnson, a moving expression of “hope for a brighter tomorrow.” No mention was made of the succession of high-level performers who had come to campus, but given the stated importance of music, there can be little question that efforts had been made to affirm East Carolina’s hospitality to “the second heart” of African-American culture and its readiness to make their voices heard.

It would be overly simplistic to imagine that the African-American performers on campus during the 1960s swayed the vote on “Dixie” or prompted later writings celebrating music during Black History Week at ECU, but one thing is certain: those who attended the concerts were exposed to a vast array of musical contributions to American culture that made continual replay of an offensive song of minstrel legacy seem quite unnecessary. Similarly, those initiating the changes well understood that African-American contributions to American and world music were sufficiently diverse and monumental to preclude overly simplistic renditions of a prejudiced past with tunes posing as heritage and culture. At the very least, the high quality musical performances of the 1960s contributed, as good music often does, to greater harmony and inclusion in campus culture.

Sources

Additional Related Material

Count Basie. Image Source: The Buccaneer, 1963

Ray Charles. Image Source: The Buccaneer, 1968.

“Brubeck Plays Thursday.” Image Source: East Carolinian. January 22, 1963. 
“Basie Performs Tonight.” Image Source: East Carolinian. July 13, 1961.

“Soul King, Ray Charles, Sings All-Time Favorites December 7.” Image Source: East Carolinian. November 30, 1967

“Ray Charles Swings On Stage and Off For Others’ Enjoyment.” Image Source: East Carolinian. December 12, 1967.

Johnny Nash performing for the East Carolina student body. Image Source: The Buccaneer, 1963

Citation Information

Title: Music Desegregation

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 7/19/2019

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