top of page
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.
​
You have mixed feelings about this because Black people are still victimized by Jim Crow Laws, segregation, and violence.
​
After a concert in Egypt, a reporter asks for your opinion about race relations in America. What will you say?
​
​
Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University
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."
​
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.
​
​
Sources
​
https://www.biography.com/musician/dizzy-gillespie
​
https://time.com/5056351/cold-war-jazz-ambassadors/
​
Keywords
Jazz, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Diplomacy, Cold War
​
​
bottom of page