Shnazzy Jazzy

As early as the beginning of the 1800's 'blackface' portrayal by actors had become a staple in the entertainment industry. Many people have claimed various reasons as to why the 'blackface' came about and the most prevailing of all is to exemplify and expand the typical segregated ideologies to the theater and eventually film and television. The 'blackface' allowed the entertainment business to remain segregated and still be able to have the role of the degraded black man by having their white actors mask or paint their faces along with an accent to their lips made them appear larger creating an almost ape-like look for the actors.

Personally, the beginning of the Nineteen Hundreds is what I see to be the greatest era of American history. Business was booming, the ability of the stock market to crash was out of the question and increased immigration brought together more cultures than ever before.

Although the United States were seeing much of their population prospering there were still many people being suppressed and demoralized. Music was a quick and easy escape from the troubles of poverty that many musicians and their followers were faced with on a daily basis. Regardless of how skilled this new generation of musicians was they were poor, often black and mostly disregarded. So they played were they were allowed and took their style to the streets. Their trumpet sounds gathered small crowds of passer-by's and eventually the attention of the local bars in their area. The most of the bars happened to also be sex houses and it was the site for the creation and expansion of jazz. According to some, the musicians wished for the music to be called 'Swing' yet their place of employment would not allow for it. When people went to these bars to pursue the women they called this "getting jazzed", they took this name and applied it to the music that would accompany them "getting jazzed" and it stuck for good.

Soon this would all change regardless of what their skin color was, almost. The stock market crash on October 29th brought all progress to an abrupt halt. With businesses booming the country felt confident in their system of stocks and loans were easy to come by regardless of whether the lender had the money or not. When the value of the stocks began to fall it sent the country into a panic and the population lost its trust in the system. Rapid selling and closing of stocks in the market are said to be main reasons for the inevitable collapse.

The days that mark the collapse are referred to as 'Black Thursday' and 'Black Tuesday' (October 24th and 29th, 1929 respectively) again a subtle degraded remark towards the black community. Unbeknownst to me the stock market crash of 1987 occurred on Monday, October 19th is also referred to as 'Black Monday'. So even seventy-eight years later the degraded name of a terrible event is posted again. So from Blackface actors to the southern black musicians which could only start in brothels at best up to the two worst stock market declines in history coined simply as a "black" day in history.

Prior to this post I was unaware of the events of the 1987 crash so I hope you learned something new today as well! See you next time.