“Jazzing Away Prejudice” with Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.

On March 4, 2024, the Zinn Education Project hosted musicologist and music historian Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. to discuss his book, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present". Ramsey was in conversation with Jesse Hagopian.
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Question: Looking at the Jim Crow era, you write about how the development and “heightened interest in jazz as an artistic pursuit posed a serious challenge to one of the central tenets of America’s caste system: racial inferiority.” [p. 34] And then you cite a Chicago Defender editorial from 1919 called “Jazzing Away Prejudice,” which argued that jazz music could serve as an engine for the cause of racial equality. But you also note that this sort of open support for jazz was rare in the Black press at that time. So could you tell us more about the significance of “Jazzing Away Prejudice,” and how the Chicago Defender differed from some other Black publications in their approach to music commentary in this period? It’d be great to get a better sense of some of the topics Black music columnists focused on at the time.