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Dizzy's 

World Tour

You are a famous jazz musician. The government is paying you to travel around the world and play concerts to help improve America's image. 

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You have mixed feelings about this because Black people are still victimized by Jim Crow Laws, segregation, and violence.

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After a concert in Egypt, a reporter asks for your opinion about race relations in America. What will you say?

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State-Dept-Jazz-012.jpg
Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University
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After the dilemma:

What really happened

    Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) was a famous trumpeter and bandleader. He released many albums and performed  alongside the biggest names in jazz. In the 1940s, he developed a new style of jazz music called "bebop." 

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     In 1956, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. organized the "jazz ambassadors" project, which sent a supergroup of Black and White musicians around the world to improve America's image. There is no evidence that Dizzy was actually asked about segregation while visiting Egypt.

 

     However, there is a video recording of another jazz superstar, Louis Armstrong, saying that he would tell the truth about segregation if asked by a reporter. In 2018, PBS released a full-length documentary about the jazz ambassadors.

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Sources

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https://www.biography.com/musician/dizzy-gillespie

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https://time.com/5056351/cold-war-jazz-ambassadors/

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Keywords

Jazz, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Diplomacy, Cold War

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