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National Voter Registration Day 2024

In the sprint to Election Day, you will be told the 2024 Election is the most consequential election since, well, the last presidential election. This election lives up to the hype. The choice is between going back or embracing hope and opportunity.

National Voter Registration Day, the country’s largest single-day voter registration drive, is September 17, 2024. Since 2012, more than five million Americans have been registered to vote on this civic holiday.

Your vote matters. If it didn’t, conservatives would not be trying every trick in the book to block access to the ballot box. You can register to vote here.

If you are already registered, confirm your status to make sure you are #VoteReady. On Election Day, be careful how you vote.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Sixty-one years ago on August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Jazz musicians were the vanguard of the movement for freedom and civil rights, a fact acknowledged by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival.

Long before Beyoncé was born, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins recorded “The Freedom Suite” which featured Oscar Pettiford on bass and Max Roach on drums.

Thousands of people from across the country arrived in Washington, DC on the “Freedom Train,” a special fleet of trains chartered by A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

From Louis Armstrong’s “Black and Blue” to Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” jazz musicians talked the talk and walked the walk. Trumpeter Lee Morgan and Max Roach were among the musicians on board the Freedom Train from New York City to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Black Music Month: Message in Our Music

As Black Music Month comes to a close, I want to focus on the message in our music. I believe to my soul that music can transform lives and inspire ordinary citizens to get involved in the fight for justice.

From the sorrow songs of the enslaved to right now, Black music has been the soundtrack of movements for social change.

 

Black Music Month: Max Roach

This year marks the centennial of the birth of drummer, composer, bandleader and activist Max Roach. His groundbreaking album, “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite,” was influenced by the Emancipation Proclamation and the emerging Civil Rights Movement.

Born in North Carolina, Roach’s family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, when he was four. He grew up near the corner of Greene and Marcy avenues where the City of New York has co-named a street for the iconic drummer. Fittingly, the “Max Roach Way” co-naming ceremony was held on Juneteenth, Freedom Day.

The Library of Congress recently opened the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

The permanent gallery, “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” features more than 120 items from across the Library’s holdings. The depository for the Max Roach Papers, the manuscript page for “We Insist!” is on display in the new gallery.

Women in Jazz Month: Samara Joy

Women in Jazz Month is celebrated annually in March. It is a time to recognize and honor the contributions of female vocalists, composers, bandleaders, and instrumentalists. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are jazz icons who are ensconced in the GRAMMY Hall of Fame.

With a voice that evokes Ella and Sarah, 24-year-old Samara Joy McLendon has already achieved GRAMMY recognition.

Samara Joy won the 2023 GRAMMY awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best New Artist for her second album, “Linger Awhile.”

Samara Joy won the 2024 GRAMMY for Best Jazz Performance for “Tight.”

Samara Joy co-wrote the soulful and defiant “Why I’m Here” featured in the Netflix film “Shirley.”

With a voice that belies her age, listening to Samara Joy is, well, a joy.

Women’s History Month: Claudette Colvin

I want to kick off Women’s History Month with Claudette Colvin who on March 2, 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white woman while riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The school student refused to move to the back of the bus when ordered by the bus driver. Claudette’s defiance led to her arrest. She was charged with violating Montgomery’s segregation ordinance, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer.

Claudette was a member of the NAACP Youth Council but the civil rights organization did not want the rebellious teenager to be the face of the bus boycott. Respectability politics forced the 15-year-old to take a back seat to Rosa Parks who nine months later similarly refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.

Claudette was one of the four plaintiffs in the court case that challenged segregation on Alabama buses. The case, Browder v. Gayle, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which on November 13, 1956 ruled Alabama’s segregated bus system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association voted to end the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott on December 20, 1956.

Colvin was almost lost to history but she is getting her flowers.

Sixty-six years after her arrest, Colvin’s record was expunged. A Black man, Judge Calvin Williams, signed the order to seal and destroy her juvenile court records.

Thank you, Sister Claudette.

Remembering Malcolm X (1925-1965)

Brother Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.

The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center is hosting an evening of prayers, performances and reflections to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the assassination of “our own black shining prince,” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

The event will be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube.