What I could find out about 1949 from this blog:
In the US:
Things generally looked like this:
and this:
But with longer skirts, more styled hair and less streamlined cars.
White people: Many separate ideals from actions, dishonour curiosity, bow easily to authority, value power and money more dearly than human relations and love.
Jim Crow is still in full swing. So is the Tuskegee Experiment – even though a cure for syphilis has been found and laws have been passed to prevent cruel Nazi experiments.
Stereotypes: coons, mammies, piccaninnies, black brutes, tragic mulattoes, Exceptional Negroes, eating watermelon, etc. Many Whites think people of colour have no inner life – that the stereotypes are true.
The Third Enlargement of Whiteness: The sons and daughters of Italian and Jewish immigrants are moving to White suburbia with government help. In time Whites will accept them as one of their own.
Puerto Ricans are coming to New York in large numbers, the beginning of a wave of Latino immigration that lasts to this day.
Angela Davis is five. She cannot go to the amusement park because she is Black.
Charles Murray is six.
Chloe Wofford, 18, goes to Howard University.
Lorraine Hansberry, 19, is at the University of Wisconsin. There she becomes interested in left-wing politics, theatre, Ibsen and Strindberg.
Miles Davis, 23, is a jazz musician in New York.
Marilyn Monroe, 23, poses naked for photographer Tom Kelley. Four years later the pictures will appear in the first issue of Playboy, making her famous.
Malcolm Little, 24, a petty thief, is in prison. There he becomes interested in Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Mendel. He reads late into the night, learning as much Black history as any professor.
Lena Horne, 32, a Black beauty, is one of the best paid Black performers. She will soon be blacklisted by Hollywood.
Billie Holiday, 34, sings for Decca Records. She is arrested for possession of narcotics (heroin).
Paul Robeson, 51, one of the best known Black men in the world, speaks out against racism. The US government and Hollywood will soon come down on him.
The US dollar is worth 42 grams of silver.
Books:
- Lillian Smith, “Killers of the Dream”
- The Green Book adds Alaska, Canada, Mexico and Bermuda to its listing of businesses that will serve Blacks.
Songs:
- Big Jay McNeeley, “Blue Jays: The Deacon’s Hop”
- Paul Williams: “Hucklebuck”
- Gene Autry, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
New words:
- race hustlers
The rest of the world:
Doris Lessing comes to London to become a writer.
George Orwell’s “1984” comes out: Newspeak, crimestop, “He who controls the past controls the future.”
Mao overthrows the KMT in China, raising the red flag of communism in Tiananmen Square. The KMT killed 10.1 million. Mao will kill 35.2 million. He completes the Chinese takeover of East Turkestan, ending Uighur independence.
Newly independent: Israel, India, Pakistan.
The British and French empires have lost much of Asia but still rule large parts of Africa. France holds onto Madagascar after a crackdown in 1947 using Senegalese soldiers that kills 80,000.
See also:
- A Lesson Before Dying – set in 1948
Abagond said:
“White people: Many separate ideals from actions, dishonour curiosity, bow easily to authority, value power and money more dearly than human relations and love.”
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Today, clearly too many black people have followed whites into this same pit by adopting the same (rules of WHITENESS aka,,,) Western values. Sadly, it’s going to get worse before it gets better!
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So back in the time of Jim Crow and the Tuskegee Experiment, POCs were still supposedly “imagining racism” and “keeping racism alive”?
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And in 2014 it’s still believed that black people are imaging racism and keeping it alive.
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Interesting… Is there any particular reason why you picked 1949?
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Wow, the term “race hustler” has been around that long? You’d think they’d have found a new phrase to bandy about by now…
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Charlie Parker , Dizzy Guilespe , Bud Powel , Max Roach , Thelonious Monk , Ray Brown , Max Roach , Kenny Clarke and others , were innovating some of the highest leval music in American history , bebop …young Miles , as Abagond mentioned , was there …about that time , Dizzy would also bring Cuban congueiro , Chano Pozo in to record Manteca
The Zoot suit wars, the cultural conflicts that the followers of bebop were subgected to, identified by their zoot suits, was erupting, Malcolm was a zoot suiter….another example of black Afro diasporic culture being repressed and buried , and in cultural conflict with the racist white society
The most important event for humanity , happening that year , that the world would never be the same is…..I was born
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@ Matari
I was thinking the same thing.
@ Paige
I used to watch Turner Classic Movies on Sunday afternoon, so the late 1940s is a time that I wonder about. I could have picked 1947 or 1948 just as easily.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rMiD8UUcd0)
I think this would be a better representation of the cutting edge music back in 1949
“Koko” with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie
This is what it is really about…this is what makes be bop some of the richest American music ever made…all Americans are in debt to these geniuses for raising the music bar in American culture
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@ B.R.
So wait, are you saying “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was not cutting edge? 😉
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0H5RmpAezA)
Here is another unbeleivably important relevant to today, peice of music recorded in 1947, which means it would have impacted 1949 in a big way
Chano Pozo featured on Dizzies “Manteca”…rumba had already been a popular dance form in American culture, but Dizzy put Afro Cuban culture directly into bebop jazz culture…and featured the conga
this is very relevant into today, considering the hispanic population in the USA, and huge Cuban presence in Miami, and clave culture from Puerto Ricans in New York, which is huge, at least huge when I lived in New York, it seemed Mambo was everywhere
I dont know how many people on here have heard these two cuts I brought in before…but if you havent, by all means , give these two examples of high bar Afro diasporic culture a listen…Id be surprised if something doesnt burst through to get you…both these cuts are major influences on me
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haha, Abagond…for sure there was lots of corn back then, there always was and always will be
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjKlnXzE-Dk)
Dorothy Dandradge singing about “Zoot Suit” this really gives some idea of the style back then…she is so wonderful
The zoot suit was stigmised by the press and white society as black and Mexican , and there were riots and pitched battles between whites against blacks and Mexicans
this is not unlike how some hip hop styles have been stigmatised …these cultural represions of black Afro diasporic cultures runs in cycles from generation to generation and country to country
the zoot suit was definitly tied into bebop hip cat way to dress (see the opening sign in the clip)
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IMO cars looked much nicer than they do today.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zu0dmom4og)
dancing was incredible back then…this guy, dancing to “Caravan”, is doing break moves…
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http://kdcah.org/katherine-dunham-biography/
I think Katherine Dunham was at the peak of her career at this time
this is a very important woman in black American culture
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(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OudU6l_aqM)
wow, I guess this is one era of music I like a lot…
Here is a concert I did, where they had the the history of blues and jazz and rhythm and blues…my part was music that represents exactly this era of 1949, where bebop modern jazz was innovated, but, people were still into popular standards back in the 1940’s also…Im the only American on stage..Jorginho Trompete is a fine trumpet player…the singer may not have the most soulful aproach, its a studied aproach, but, she is seriously in tune and anyone criticising her should hear her sing samba/bossa, she would melt your heart
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Abagond,
Here is someone who is THINKING like it’s 1949
quick background on who this is: a Nevada rancher, Clive Bundy, who is owes the federal government money for allowing his cows to graze on government land for years (for free) — and when the federal government went to collect his cows in lieu of money as payment, Clive and his posse of “freedom fighters” met them with guns.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/cliven-bundy-racist-rant-video.html?mid=google
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
Now that sounds about 1940’s –sort of Jim Crow-ish
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I don’t want to hijack this thread to talk about clothes.
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I love the style of dress. Hair impeccably coiffed. People looked nicer then.
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Interesting post – I know next to nothing about this era.
B.R
You are right about what you say about Katherine Dunham. I just saw this on Wikipedia
The Afonso Arinos Law in Brazil
In 1950, while visiting Brazil, Dunham and her group were refused rooms at a first-class hotel in São Paulo, the Hotel Esplanada, frequented by many American businessmen. Understanding that the fact was due to racial discrimination, she made sure the incident was publicized. The incident was widely discussed in the Brazilian press and became a hot political issue. In response, the Afonso Arinos law was passed in 1951 that made racial discrimination in public places a felony in Brazil
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Dunham)
I guess this is some of what you have said on here. Small consolation but at least her raising awareness made change happen.
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*I guess this is some of what you have said on here* I mean ‘I guess this is some of what has been said on here (meaning this blog) already’
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@Linda: Many of his supporters are abandoning him. See and people wonder why black people get angry. He thinks like a person from the Jim Crow era in the year of 2014.
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I’m glad that this person (idiot!) Clive Bundy is ON VIEW in the national limelight… he and others like him are evidence that this so called bygone era isn’t at all bygone!
If a few unemployed blacks in a Nevada housing project represent ALL black people in the U.S. then shouldn’t Clive Bundy’s views about blacks, cotton and freedom represent all white people?
Obviously it does to Clive Bundy who felt safe enough to spout his ridiculous beliefs publicly to his white brethren. SMH
WHITENESS isn’t only demonic. It makes one super-stupid!
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Clive Bundy only let’s me know that white supremacy/the white mind-set is here to stay in the USA, 2014. At least I know where he stands, the color-blind racists are the ones that do the most damage because they don’t know they have a problem, and continue to go unchecked. “I voted for Obama, how can I be racist” SMH.
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I don’t want to hijack this thread to talk about clothes.
Phoebe, don’t feel awkward about it. I for one will read your comments on fashion/clothing. Furthermore, it’s easy to trivialize clothing and fashion but they happen to be highly significant forms of non verbal communication (though some people pretend to be all “cazhh” about it). Also, clothing reflects social mood and norms. For example, when fish net stockings and mohawks first appeared in London, I think we can see a certain discontent with the social order being expressed in the dress. That’s a tired and boring interpretation but has something to it, I think.
The very long period of disgustingly baggy jeans, etc. worn past the ass, also has a social meaning. Sloppy dress has a meaning, I do so hope it is on it’s way out.
You don’t have to intellectualize it to make it “acceptable” though, I think whatever you say on the matter would have value.
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Omnipresent , wow , thank you for that info on Dunham in São Paulo , I didnt know that…Brazil has all the racist trappings as any country in the Americas that brought slaves from Africa
Pheobeprunelle, Im not sure what you mean, by all means you can make comments about clothes back then
My point about the zoot suit is , it became a flash point for racism and discrimination …and, while it was the style associeted with jazz and bebop, Mexicans in California were included in those discriminated against. The Zoot Suit Riots were historical racist confrontational clashes of culture , and those dynamics are playing out big time in American culture today
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i dont understand the unicorn reference
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http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=unicorn&defid=1650447
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There are tremendous insights into America today, by a little investigation and cultural understanding of what was happening back then in the 40’s and late thirties..
In 1937 , Anslinger passed the bill in congress that would make marijuana as ilegal and as bad as heroin and cocaine…this was the template for the police to crack down hard on black and Mexican Americans , and Mexican immigrants , and put them in jail ,which has really huge implications into today , roughly 700,000 people a year get put in jail for marijuana use only , and you can bet, most sre black and brown people…all this centered around stigmatising the black American jazz and bebop culture , which, bebop laid the foundation for what happened to jazz in the fifties and early sixties , and this period is absolutly the highest bar American instrumental music ever touched..yet reduced to drug crazed hop heads in concervative white cultural definitions
I brought in my concert footage to show how, even in another country, musicians have made the effort to study and preserve the incredible values passed down to us by great black American innovators exactly from this period , innovators dogged by racism and cultural surpresion at every step
But, I really hope people will listen to the “Koko” Charlie Parker and Dizzy clip, and the Dizzy Chano Pozo clip I brought in. I talk all the time about the value of up tempo bop, and there it is for people to hear, and the Chano Pozo clip , the music is so intence and splendid, if you cant get something out of that, something is dead inside
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV8Hj_E8LJc)
Duke Ellington – Take the a train
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhohg9Lj8vs)
This may interest you, Abagond..this is actualy a cigarette promo and it shows black New Yorkers in the forties , and just how they dance and party
The dance they are doing is called “bop” , done to jazz but not bebop. Its not the advanced Lindy hoppers , who were extraordinary dancers, these are regular black New Yorkers. The step is kind of “1and2and12/1and2and12” or “shufflestepshufflestepstepstep” or “shuflestep (right)/shufflestep (left)/stepstep”
What is interesting is , in my social circle, that was black american, in the mid sixties, among all the dance styles like boogaloo, watusi, twist, mashed potatoes , slop, etc etc , we did a couple dance derived exactly from these steps, and called it bop, but we danced it to rhythm and blues tunes…Don Cornelious , of Soul Trane fame, in the docu “Black Dance in America”, said in Chicago, where he is from, and me, they would do this dance “bop”, and it was derived from the Lindy Hop Jitter Buggers
It just shows this enourmous connection and evolution of black American culture
Yes, V8, Duke Ellington is an American treasure, and he represents the swing big band ethic that was really big in the thirties and carried over into the forties, and bebop was the new innovation in the forties…it was met with resistance from the big band swing enthusiasts, but new younger dancers responded to the new bebop with its hightened tempos and exitement by, according to this “Black dance in America” going to the air, with lots of intricate lifts…and as a matter of fact, great tap dancers throwing down their back heels with strong accents , inspired bebop drummers to stop feathering the bass drum on the quarter note , and switch to using the bass drum for accents
There is so much history to be learned by examining culturaly what was going on each generation in America, and how the black Americans were defining the culture, and, how the racism and represion, burying and destroying of these cultures played out…since the minstrel show days , into the jazz era, into the big band swing era, into bebop/modern jazz, into rhythm and blues, rock and roll and blues with new electric instruments, into disco into hip hop, jack swing,
This is why I say, jazz is black American history, not black American history is jazz…all black American history isnt jazz, but jazz is a black American story
There is so so much treasure, just waiting to be discovered, and who makes the effort to discover it, will be deeply rewarded
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahoJReiCaPk)
Here is exactly what Im talking about
The Lindy Hop was a dance of the thirties , invented by dancer Shorty Snowdon
Here, is the early 40″s, the tempo is speeded up and they are going to the air
Seriously, check this out…this is ridiculous, completly off the map in outragousness
man, if people arnt blown away by some of these things , they must be soul dead
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF3KOLS9qLg)
Do you think James Brown invented the splits in black dance?
Yeah, this is the Nicholas brothers in 43…which would seriously impact 49…
tap no less….anyone think this is shucking and jiving?
just look at the dance ethic in the 40’s…
tap, Cab Calloway (in the beginning of the clip), the big band sound, are from past decades, but , this is where its evolving in the 40’s…there is a connection in these black American cultures…down into today…there is a connection in racism against these cultures down into today
notice the costumes in the Lindy Hop clip
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You know, considering the clips Ive brought in, “Koko” , by Bird and Diz, heralding the start of bebop ,Chano Pozo and Diz in “Manteca” demonstrating Afro Cuban culture mixing with modern jazz, the incredible Lindy Hop dancers, the Nicholas brothers in tap, the decade of the 40’s absolutly wipes out this last decade as far as music dance culture in the USA…it isnt even close…
Even the white people back then, were hipper than the white people of today
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@ B.R.
Wonderful! Thank you.
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@ V8driver
“I am not a unicorn” with a picture of middle-class Black Americans in the 1940s, means that, contrary to stereotype, they were not rare creatures. Even now, due to segregation, white flight and stereotypes, most Whites seem to have no idea that nearly half of Blacks are middle-class.
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V8 driver &Abagond: Thanks for clearing up the unicorn reference. I was confused about that as well.
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@B.R. That youtube of the dancers for the cigarette promo was cool. I like that.
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Very cool video B.R.
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thanks, abagond.
@kiwi if you look up “unicorns” at urbandictionary it’s a whole other thing.
i think the “girly” font and design etc is from the tagline on the photo? blacksnob.com, a blog by a woman. not looking for source picture now, thanks.
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I would get on my knees and beg Solesearch, who sais she hates jazz, to watch the Lindy Hop clip I brought in that I said is off the map…and simply outragous..
Many people have been led astray of what real jazz is, and if they just can see a slice of the real thing, it might change their mind
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Kiwi , I havnt heard the part about tongues , but , Ive heard it called devils music from the church…in the early stages of jazz , the church condemned it
An interesting historicle note about the drum set which was invented for jazz,, the toms , the smaller drums on the kit that arnt the snare , are taken out if the orchestra pit , and are of Chinese origin…
This might be late 18 hundreds , or early 19 hundreds…which kind of implies a cultural influence , one that isnt blatently acknowledged , as the Asian story in America isnt really told, yet , there is the physical reality that Chinese culture was excerting a presence…based on the fact there was a Chinese presence in America
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How did I miss this post!
Independence movements were gathering pace in “the colonies”.
The British had left India in 1947, Burma and Palestine a year later, and the Dutch left Indonesia in 1949. But it was also around this time that Apartheid was being officially put in place…
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Some parts of America, is still like that movie Pleasantville. and womens in Pop Culture, have there hair & clothes in 1940’s/1950’s Pin Up style.
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