On the evening of October 12, 1931, Louis Armstrong opened a three day run at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas. Among those who paid 75¢ to get in that night was a freshman at the University of Texas named Charlie Black. He knew nothing of jazz, had never even heard of Armstrong; he just knew there would likely be lots of girls to dance with. Then Armstrong began to play. "He played mostly with his eyes closed, letting flow from that inner space of music things that had never before existed. He was the first genius I'd ever seen. It is impossible to overstate the significance of a sixteen-year-old southern boy seeing genius for the first time in a black person. With literally never seeing a black man in anything other than a service capacity, Louis opened my eyes wide and put to me a choice: Blacks were alright in there place, but what was the place for such a man? And of the people of which he sprung?" Charlie Black.
Charlie Black went on to become Prof. Charles L. Black, a distinguished teacher of constitutional law at Yale. In 1954, he helped provide the answer to the question Louis Armstrong's music had first posed for him. He volunteered for the team of lawyers, black and white, who finally persuaded the Supreme Court in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregating school children on the basis of race and color was unconstitututional.
JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns, Volume Four
Listen to Stardust.
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