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This article examines the complex social phenomenon of racial passing during the Jazz Age as both a pragmatic survival strategy and a profound critique of America’s rigid racial hierarchy. It argues that passing—the process where individuals of mixed-race ancestry crossed the color line to live as white—represented a radical interrogation of the very concept of race itself, exposing the biological absurdity of the “one-drop rule” while simultaneously revealing the crushing weight of systemic racism. Through analysis of literary works by Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and James Weldon Johnson, alongside historical case studies and the era’s social science discourse, this…
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This article examines the Great Migration (1916-1970) as the fundamental demographic catalyst for the transformation of jazz from a regional folk tradition into a national art form. It argues that the mass movement of approximately six million African Americans from the rural South to the urban North and West did not merely relocate musicians, but created the essential conditions for jazz’s modernization, commercialization, and artistic evolution. Through analysis of migration patterns, urban settlement, and the resulting cultural infrastructure, this article demonstrates how the concentration of Black populations in cities like Chicago, New York, and Detroit generated the critical mass of…
Explaining History Podcast
Tag: James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
/ Jazz era