The New Orleans school board has unanimously reversed a little-known but century-old ban on jazz in schools with its president saying it had racist origins, in a city arguably the jazz capital of the world and played a massive role in developing jazz and where it is still played nightly at various venues.
“I’m very glad that we can rescind this policy. I want to acknowledge it. It was rooted in racism,” Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker said during the meeting Thursday night. “And I also want to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of our students and especially of our band directors, whose legacy continues from 1922 through present day,” he said.
The board’s resolution said it wanted “to correct the previous action of the School Board and to encourage jazz music and jazz dance in schools.”
Board minutes from March 24, 1922, said “it was decided that jazz music and jazz dancing would be abolished in the public schools.” One member – who walked out on a special meeting called at the end of the session because reporters were not allowed to cover it – abstained from voting on jazz.
Officials told The Times Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate that the 1922 board members were trying to distance students from a genre with African American origins.
A copy of a news clipping from 1922, posted on the newspaper’s website, did not mention race. It quoted the resolution’s sponsor, “Mrs. A. Baumgartner,” as saying she had seen “a lot of rough dancing” at after-school events. “This cheek-to-cheek dancing is terrible," she said.
Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, brought the policy to the board’s attention after reading about it in Al Kennedy’s book “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans.”
“It was just one of those things that was buried in the books,” board member Carlos Zervigon said Friday. “Obviously it was ridiculous and never really applied. But what an opportunity to be able to go back and reverse it on the 100th anniversary of its passage and acknowledge what our schools played in the formation and development of music in our classrooms,” he explained.
The earlier board's vote on March 24, 1922, was passed without “prior policy development, analysis, or debate,” and the proposal had not been on the agenda, the current board noted.
“We’re glad that the policy was ignored by our schools, because our schools played a major role in the development of jazz,” said member Katherine Baudouin.
