This article examines the pervasive and vehement antijazz crusade of the 1920s as a significant cultural phenomenon that reveals profound anxieties about race, modernity, and social order in post-World War I America. It argues that the widespread condemnation of jazz music by medical authorities, religious leaders, social reformers, and public intellectuals functioned as a proxy war against the rapid social transformations of the Jazz Age, with the music serving as a potent symbol for broader fears regarding racial integration, sexual liberation, and the erosion of Victorian morality. Through analysis of primary source discourse from the period, this article categorizes the…

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