The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor

5. From “Tobacco Tags” to the Urban Airwaves: 1959–1968

141 In the late 1950s, we were living in the Riverton, a very secure upper-middle-class Harlem housing development between 135th and 138th Streets. The group of ten or so buildings that made up the Riverton community served as an oasis, a peaceful and comfortable world apart from the normal frenzy of urban life. Many of our neighbors there were celebrities whose children played with ours. Although Kim and Duane were happy youngsters living in a safe and affirming environment ,they’dgottenoldenoughtounderstandthedisturbingimagesthey sawontelevision.Andtheyknewthatpeoplewhoresembledthem—African Americans—were the subject of those unsettling scenes. Thanks to Teddi, we sat at dinner each evening in our tastefully appointed home where life was tranquil, fairly predictable, and good. And although we ourselves were far removed from the protests, bombings, and senseless murders of the South, Duane and Kim demanded to know why. Theairitselfwaschargedandschizophrenic,attimesinvigoratingus with excitement and hope, and at other times thickening with anger and frustration. Change was on the horizon, and there were signs all around. Wewanteditandanticipatedit.ManywhiteAmericans,however,feared and resented it. And by way of television, the fearful entered the living room of my Harlem home, spewing heated words within earshot of my innocent and curious children. five From “Tobacco Tags ” to the Urban Airwaves 1959–1968 142 The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor When I was a child, our people believed that achievement was the most powerful form of resistance. Our heroes were the likes of James ReeseEurope, RolandHayes,PaulRobeson,andMarian Anderson,and their lives showed us that hard work and excellence were the keys to gainingtheworld ’srespect.Neitherhardworknorexcellencecoulderasethe color line, but they could take you around the world and earn you the highregardofpresidents,kings,andothercrownedheadsofstate. Excellence was the loophole, the enticing crack in an otherwise impenetrable racist wall. So we turned inward and worked hard to create ourselves in theimageandlikenessofwhatoureldersbelievedwecouldbecome;and in the sequestered space of our warm, tightly knit communities, those elders hovered around us like eagles fiercely guarding their young. Civil Rights leaders? We had plenty of them! They were in every one of our Washington, D.C., classrooms, behind our pulpits, in our drugstores, on our street corners. But things were different now, and the community that was once a few blocks in a section of a single town was now expanded to encompass all of the black communities in all of the black sections in all of the American towns. Thanks first to radio, and now to television, we were becoming aware of one another to a degree never before possible. Television created contact between African Americans in Harlem and those in Mississippi, between the Sweet Auburn district in Atlanta and the South Side of Chicago. Television made it clear that whether in Sweet Auburn, or on U Street, or on Chicago’s South Side, or in the Vine Street district of Kansas City, African Americans were engaged in a common struggle. For much of the 1950s, I was on the road with various trios and quartets , playing and making a living. As we traveled, we encountered the usual inconveniences of segregation, as, for example, during a trip from TorontotoAtlanta.Ontheway,westoppedinVirginiaandencountered trouble there in our attempt to use the restroom. Even so, the old order wasbeginningtoshiftinwaysthatsignaled sweepingchanges. Itstarted with the announcement of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. In the summer of the next year, the murder trial of young Emmett Till was telecast. A Chicago teenager visiting his family in Mississippi, Tillwasbrutallytorturedandmurderedforallegedlywhistlingatawhite woman.Twowhitemenwerearrestedforthecrimebutswiftlyacquitted From “Tobacco Tags” to the Urban Airwaves 143 byanall-whitejury.Ontheirtelevisions,peopleacrossthenationviewed theperfunctoryproceedingsoftheTallahatchieCourthouseinSumner, Mississippi, and, in horrified disbelief, became eyewitnesses to justice gone terribly awry. In December of that same year, Rosa Parks defied Alabama law by refusing to move to the back of the bus, and her courage ballooned into a bus boycott that went on for months. For the first time that any of us could recall, blacks in the South could celebrate a measure of success against the racial oppression that extended for generations back to the time of slavery. It was just one victory of many, but the success of the boycott energized not just those who lived in the South, but African Americans around the nation. Early in 1960, the state of my birth began to stir awake with a new fire in its belly. I recall the North Carolina of my childhood memory as a place of quiet complacency, so quiet, in fact, that...