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CHAPTER SIX JAZZ AND GOVERNMENT – Ed Sebesta 10/10/2020 Hatton W. Sumners saw the American constitution as being Anglo-Saxon1 and deriving ultimately from Germanic influences which worked their way through English history and such documents as the Magna Carta. In opposite to this Anglo-Saxon constitution he saw “Jazz thinking,” “Jazz philosophy.” He conceptualized Texas white people having an Anglo-Saxon civilization. Sumners’ conceptualizations of Texan and American society would also be useful to characterize Eastern and Southern European white immigrants who weren’t AngloSaxon and their labor unions as alien, but that will be reviewed in a chapter on Sumners’ opposition to unions and their leadership. This chapter will focus on Anglo-Saxonism versus “Jazz thinking.” Sumners gave an address to a meeting of former Tennesseans on Tennessee Day at the Texas State Fair in 1907. In this speech he defines Texas pioneer identity and hence the ideals of current white Texans with an emphasis of a violent white masculinity. Pioneering Sumners explains, “… has appealed not to the sluggard and the effeminate, but the brave and the strong,” combining effeminacy with laziness and defining it as opposite to strength and bravery. Pioneering is for those who are prepared to be violent and face violence since these Tennesseans “consecrated by blood” Texas. Their invasion of the lands of non-white Native Americans is set up as heroic with Sumners pointing out that they risked the dangers of “hostile savages” who lacked the Tennesseans’ “standards of Christianity and Anglo-Saxon civilization” and hence are inferior. The history of Texas is that the Native Americans faced the depredations of white Americans coveting their land. The Tennesseans are also heroic for their participation in battles against the British in the War of 1812, in fighting for the Confederacy, and fighting for Texas secession from Mexico.2 Sumners holds up these Tennesseans as ideals to be emulated by the public in fighting corruption in government. Since women were not allowed to vote in 1907 this speech was to set an ideal for white men to emulate in civic life. In 1915 in a speech to the Old Soldiers and Old Settlers’ Reunion in Hillsboro, Texas Sumners repeats many of these themes. Sumners states that it was a “sturdy, virile folk who in the early days turned their faces westward,” referring to Texas pioneers, and in Texas “established Anglo-Saxon civilization, and under the shadow of Mexican oppression established the foundation of a great republic.” 1
Anglo-Saxon is a reference used in modern times to refer to English racial identity. Though it doesn’t have a basis in historical fact. Many different groups have been part of the origins of the English from invading Vikings, Normans, Romans, Germanic tribes as well as pre-Roman peoples. Two of the Germanic groups were Angles and Saxons. There was a time when Germanic tribes migrated to Britain starting in the 5 th century and from that period to the Norman Conquest of 1066 is the Anglo-Saxon period of time in English history. 2 No author, “Meet at the Fair,” DMN, Nov. 3, 1907, page 6.
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Women can vote and so unlike his 1907 speech, he praises them also, as those “who, with them, endured the privations and braved the dangers incident to pioneer life.” Native Americans resisting dispossession and exclusion from Texas are a hazard women heroically endure, “Where can be found a grander example of fortitude … praying for the husband who may never return, not knowing when the warhoop of the Indian would call her to the defense of her home and children?” There is reference to the Civil War, the “Old Soldiers” are evidently Confederate veterans. Sumner says in his speech: With the blood of these men in your veins, inspired by their example, you met as they did, the tests which only strong, brave men can meet. Today your minds turn back to those days when the dark shadows of the impending conflict began to gather over the State. You answered that call, and we honor you today as heroes and patriots.” The “blood of these men” refers to the pioneers who were the preceding generation to the current generation of Confederate veterans. This heroic pioneer and Confederate past is to guide the present in opposing strengthening the federal courts. Sumners in the concluding paragraph. In the concluding paragraph of his speech Sumners argues that to increase the power of the federal courts would be to act contrary to the heroic pioneer and Confederate military past, stating, “We must not turn backward; we must not confess inability to meet the difficulties which have come to stimulate and keep virtie [virile] our patriotism and to challenge our genius.” Sumners also states, “The danger is in the widespread tendency to place upon the Federal Government the responsibility of doing things which the States could well do, unnecessarily to concentrate power in the Federal Government ...” Again opposing federal power is about keeping a pioneer masculinity.3 Sumners both conceived American government as having an Anglo-Saxon origin and the South not just based on white supremacy, but Anglo-Saxon supremacy. In 1919 in opposing an amendment ending segregation in rail road cars in a bill giving the federal government more regulatory power over the railroads, Sumners stated in Congress, that “The South has a hard situation to deal with, both social and political and will countenance no alteration of the code that is not founded upon Anglo Saxon supremacy.” To Sumners the South is Anglo-Saxon.4
3 4
No author, “Veterans and Settlers Reunite at Hillsboro,” DMN, July 28, 1915, Page 15. No author, “Fight is Waged for State Rail Control,” DMN, Nov. 16, 1919, Page 1, 8. Quote from page 8.
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In a 1931 speech at a luncheon for recently naturalized citizens, a DMN article reports that Sumners, “traced the rights of the American colonists to govern themselves back to the earliest Anglo-Saxon institutions of government.”5 The Magna Carta was issued in Latin in 1215 after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 by a French speaking King to a French speaking ruling class of nobles both of which were from French Normandy and ruled over an Anglo-Saxon underclass. The author of this essay doesn’t believe in the fables about the Magna Carta, but wishes to provide a historical reference point to give a context for Sumners’ comical assertions and because many readers might think the Magna Carta was issued by people who spoke some type of old English that you might hear in movies or had any idea that they were Anglo-Saxon and think that the Magna Carta is some Anglo-Saxon thing. In a speech proposing two amendments to the U.S. Constitution in the U.S. House, July 3, 1943, because he is afraid of federal power, he states: Everything in the picture indicates that we are headed for another one of the great contests which have occurred in Anglo-Saxon governmental history when the people, recovering from periods of indifference and of man-worship have returned to neglected responsibility of self-government, and to the guidance of great fundamental natural laws, laws of God, which He has provided for the guidance in self-government of His creatures in whose souls He has implanted the aspiration to be free and self-governing.6
Additionally he felt that the ultimate origins of the American constitution were Germanic of the time of the ancient Romans. In a speech to the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., in 1932 he described the origin of the Constitution as follows. … and sees the gradual evolution of our Constitution under natural processes from the first century, when Tacitus gives us that wonderful glimpse of it, operating among the Anglo Saxons four centuries before they went to England, the study becomes fascinating beyond measure.7 In a speech to the Technical Club of Dallas in 1934 in a DMN article, “German Tribal Ideas in Government Today, Sumners Tells Club," Sumners describes the government of the Germans by the Roman writer Tacitus. He is reported as warning that, “The Anglo-
5
No author, “Newest Citizens Hear Significance of Independence,” DMN, July 5, 1931, Page 4. Congressional Record, 78th Congress, 1st Sess., Appendix July 3, 1943, pages A3454-A3456 7 Congressional Record, 72nd Congress, 2nd Sess., Vol. 76 Part 1, Dec. 7, 1932, page 147. See also, “Are We Observing the Natural Laws that Govern Governments?”, American Bar Journal, Vol. 18 No. 11, Nov. 1932, pages 743-49, 768. 6
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Saxon adherence to principles or the Latin devotion to personal leadership – between these the American people must decide within the next few years.”8 At a 1947 dinner unveiling a portrait of Sumners, he declared “The principles of the Constitution are as old as Tacitus’ Germanic tribesmen who met armed to vote on propositions.”9 In opposition to these Germanic Anglo-Saxon traditions Sumners see Jazz philosophy and Jazz ideas of government. The DMN in 1922 in an article, “Jazz Influences Governing Nation Mr. Sumners Says: Return to Normal is Need of World,” reports a speech given members of the Woman’s Bible class of the Munger Place Methodist Church by Sumners who sees Jazz as a label for destructive forces in society as follows: The solidarity of community life has been broken up. The line of cleavage runs through where the line of solidarity obtained before the war. This discussion can go no farther in society. We shall shortly begin the establishment of a normal attitude or we shall begin our descent in the other direction. I am optimistic and I believe that we are due to establish a normal attitude. The activities of this period are marked by the greatest blood-letting time of the world. The people ought to realize that we are not normal mentally, morally and economically. How long after the strain of the great war we shall need to return to the former conditions, I do not know. The world has the need of a philosopher to guide them. I am not sure as to just what intellectual influence religion is at this time having on the world. The music of the times is rather indicative as to the influences which are governing the people. We have jazz music, jazz philosophy, jazz standards and to a great extent jazz religion and jazz life. We are jazzing it up in general. Our people are losing the most priceless possession which was ever given them by their immoderate dependence upon the efficacy of legislative laws and the tendency to allow the Federal Government to direct the affairs of their State. We have our definite forms of Government, community or municipal, county, State and National, but the foundation of all these Governments is the home.10 In a speech to the Oklahoma Bar Association in 1940 reported in the DMN in a Dec. 29, 1940 article titled, “Sumners Fears Passing of Free Government,” jazz is given as a risk to the passing of freedom. From the article:
8
No author, “German Tribal Ideas in Government Today, Sumners Tells Club,” DMN, Nov. 7, 1934, page 9. Crume, Paul, “Sumners Sees Himself Through History’s Eyes,” DMN, Jan. 10, 1947, page 3. 10 No author, “Jazz Influences Governing Nation Mr. Sumners Says,” DMN, July 31, 1922, page 9. 9
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“Free government,” he said, “faces two dangers. It is being attacked from abroad and from within, we are deliberately trying to destroy it. “Instead of whipping our problem, we’ve laid down and cried for Uncle Sam to come and do the job for us. We’ve taken our heritage to the door of the Federal Treasury and sold it for money we’ve got to pay ourselves.” Sumners, chairman of the House judiciary committee, termed the period from the end of the World War until 1940 an era of jazz statesmanship in which public opinion was ignored and the people have been governed by a lot of crazy notions.”11 The racial component of Sumners’ references to Jazz is revealed in some of his uses of the term. In a 1936 campaign speech in Garland denounces government programs. Sumners states, “This Country has symptoms of the disease that has attacked Europe, causing the people to lose the power to govern” and states, “We’ve jazzed off into the jungle.”12 Often the theme of Anglo-Saxonism and jazz are mentioned and contrasted in the same speech. For example in the 1932 speech to the American Bar Association in which he asserts an Anglo-Saxon origin going back to the accounts of the ancient Roman Tacitus, he also denounces current political trends as inspired by jazz and uses the term “jungle.” In the Congressional Record which carried his speech is a section titled, “We Have Jazzed Off Into the Jungles,” in which he in which jazz music itself is attacked. Sumners states: When some one learned how to press a button and get light instead of having to skin a yearling and get some tallow for candles, and other learned how to do similar things, we became afflicted with a serious malady, and it was not inferiority complex. Everything was out of date. The masterpieces of music, which had thrilled and elevated the souls of people through the years were cast into the discard and we brought forth our contribution, My Moon Eyed Baby in Watermelon time. A similar thing happened to our literature, to our philosophy, and in no small degree to education and to religion. Everybody got young. Grandma whacked off a foot or two of her skirt and grabbed a horn; grandpa straighten up his old back and hobbled into the procession. Ma and pa cut a few fancy capers and joined with brother and sister up in the front. Everybody had a horn. We could not be bothered; all in a hurry to go somewhere, to leave there to go somewhere else.
11
No author, “Sumners Fears Passing of Free Government,” DMN, Dec. 29, 1940, page 8. No author, “Sumners Trounces Wild Schemes for Allaying All Ills,” DMN, 7/5/1936, page 1, 7.
12
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Whatever needed attention would be all right just around the corner; on with the jazz. We have jazzed off into the jungles. We have lost our way. We are looking for a boulevard to go out on. … [Boldface added.] 13 “Moon-eyed” means infatuated. It is fairly obvious that “Watermelon time,” is a reference to jazz being the music invented by African Americans. The word “jungle” also indicates that Sumners identified jazz with African Americans. These terms and phrases, “jazzed off into the jungles” and “watermelon time” were used at least until 1942. In his speech to the National Association of Retail Druggist national convention in Oct. 1941, published in their magazine in Feb. 1942. We went through the period of jazz. That was a funny time. During the World War we reached a high peak in efficiency, in unselfish world patriotism, and then we took a nose dive. We went to a new low level in practically every respect—the jazz age. Everybody wanted to be young. Nobody could be bothered about anything serious. Do you remember? Somebody told us old birds, “If you will turn your hat down in front and behind, you will look ten years younger.” And we all went around with our hats turned down. Old grandmother cut a foot or two off her skit, bobbed her hair, and grabbed a horn—I mean literally. Granddad straighten up his old back and went hobbling along in the procession. During this period a perfect swarm of crackpots descended on the world. They got control of public opinion and of public policy in England. The people are paying the price in England now. These crockpots did do so bad in America in messing things up. We are now paying a high price now. Somebody came around, you remember, teaching such things as the new philosophy of the self-determination of children. Everything was to be new. Everyone had been fools until they arrived. That was a very convenient sort of philosophy. Mother and Dad turned the kids loose to go to hell. They went off to a hooch party—their children to fill our penitentiaries, literally. We took the masterpieces of literature, of philosophy, garnered from the ages, and threw them into the discard, and made our contribution of pure unadulterated rot. We took the masterpieces of music that had thrilled and charmed the hearts of people throughout the generations, and threw them into discard. We made our wonderful contributions in their stead, such as “My Moon-Eyed Baby in Watermelon Time.” Jazz music, jazz literature, jazz philosophy, jazz religion, 13
Congressional Record, 72nd Congress, 2nd Sess., Vol. 76 Part 1, Dec. 7, 1932, page 147. See also, “Are We Observing the Natural Laws that Govern Governments?” Vol. 18 No. 11, Nov. 1932, pages 743-49, 768.
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jazz morals, jazz statesmanship. There being nothing especially hilarious about thinking with our own “thinkers,” we lost their use. Our age, our generation jazzed off into the jungles.14 At the March 1942 South Carolina Bar Association 49th annual meeting in Columbia, South Carolina Sumners gave a speech and what he had to say about jazz was similar. That was the period of jazz. Somebody said to the old birds like me, “If you wear your hat turned down you will look ten years younger,” and all of us went around with our hats turned down. Grandmother cut a foot or two off her skirt and Grandfather straighten up and joined the procession. Some of these smart “sisterettes” came around about that time teaching the great discovery, the selfdetermination of children, and the big words they splattered over their audiences! The audience didn’t know, and they didn’t know, what they were talking about. Nobody did. So a good time was had by all. It was a convenient sort of philosophy. The kids were turned loose to go to Hell and fill the penitentiaries, while mother and father went off to hooch parties. You know what literature we produced in that period, the hottest, rottenest stuff that ever came from the press. We threw into the discard the masterpieces of music that had charmed and thrilled the hears of the people through the ages, and then we went wild over “My Moon-eyed Baby in Watermelon Time". There is no mystery as to why we are in this terrible mess.15 In the same speech the Magna Carta is brought up in Sumners’ discussions of the origins of what he considers good government and Tacitus is quoted about the ancient Germans. Also, in this speech, in a section where he laments that people have forgotten what good American citizenship means, and since it is South Carolina Bar Association to which he is speaking, Sumners quotes an inscription of a Confederate monument on the South Carolina capitol grounds in defining what responsible American citizenship is. In a broadcast over the radio Red Network of the National Broadcasting Network, April 10, 1941 Sumners blames unpreparedness, “when our nation faces the gravest perils in its history,” on jazz. The entry of the United States would be on Dec. 7, 1941 when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Sumners attack on jazz is the leading theme in his speech starting with the 3rd paragraph as follows:
14
Sumners, Hatton W., “We the People …”, N.A.R.D. Journal, Vol. 64 No. 4, Feb. 1942, published by The National Association of Retail Druggists, pages 236-238, 280-282. Quote on pages 238, 280. 15 Sumners, W. Hatton, “Address of Hon. Hatton W. Sumners,” South Carolina Bar Association, Transactions of the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting, March 26-27, 1942, Columbia, South Carolina, pages 105-117. Quote on pages 108109. Confederate quote is on pages 106-107.Magna Carta page 113. Tacitus page 115.
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Immediately following the World War we, and other democracies, swung rapidly from as high a peak of unselfish patriotism, to the other extreme -- the period of the jazz - - the distinctive characteristics and inevitable consequences of which were clearly discernible then to any detached student of current developments. I tried to make our people realize what we were doing then and the inevitable result, but nobody could be bothered. People listened only to what they wanted to hear. It was the grand age of the Jazz -- jazz music, jazz literature, jazz philosophy and jazz statesmanship. Each of the developments which followed, one after the other, were equally visible but the people would not listen. The historians of the future will probably classify that period as the most freakish, the most nonunderstandable pat of the history of our culture and civilization, ending for others already and for us certainly, in the greatest tragedy of the ages, unless we in America, now, as a united people, equip ourselves physically, morally, patriotically and every other way, to meet the impending test of our ability to endure. Such a preparation, such a fitness, might prevent us from having actually to demonstrate that ability and having to meet the supreme test Nothing short of it can. Don’t permit anyone to fool you about that.16 Get text of the rest of the speech. XXXX Sumners’ identification of good government being Anglo-Saxon and bad government being of jazz continues to the end of his career. In 1946 in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York he both invokes the Magna Carta and condemns jazz. Sumners states that, “The history of democratic progress is the history of decentralization of governmental power, moving back from the center to the people.” He states,” The Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, our own Declaration of Independence – great monuments along the line of democratic progress – are auguries because they mark the time and the place when governmental power was moved back from the center towards the people.” Sumners sees the federal aid to the states to build roads as a step towards centralization and bringing down democracy. It happens that the first pressure group in my time in Congress was made up of people who were selling automobiles and gasoline and using automobiles and things like that; the people of the sort who belong to Chamber of Commerce. They wanted money from the Federal Government to build roads, and build them quickly.
16
Address of Hatton W. Sumners, on Red Network of the National Broadcasting Company, Thursday, April 10, 1941, at 10:30 pm, EST. On press release for Friday Morning Papers, April 11th, on NBC News letter head. DHS Box 121.4.4.
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I tried to argue with them. I tried to tell them about the danger of putting the nose of the camel under the tent. But that was the Grand Age of Jazz. We were all young – grandma, grandpas and all the rest of us. Somebody said to me, “if you would wear your hat pulled down more in front and behind, to hide where the hair is thinning out, you would look a lot younger.” So I pulled the hat down in front and behind. Grandmother cut a foot or two off her skirts, and bobbed her hair and grabbed a horn. We had turned loose on our people a lot of folks who actually did not have sense enough to know they did not know. We called in a lot of people – called them “Brain-Trusters” – whose idea seemed to be that if anything had stood the test for twenty-five years, there must be something radically wrong with it. Everybody was so determined to be young that mom and pop grabbed a bottle of hooch and went out to dance, and the children went to hell – to the penitentiaries – and are still going. I think maybe we are coming back to common sense, but you couldn’t do anything with that bunch. Sumners continues that he sees things going downhill since President Coolidge calling it a “nose dive” and the road building program leading to other government programs.17 Sumners also linked jazz to the idea of degeneration in a 1942 speech to the Kentucky Bar Association reported by the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky. Sumners sees the United States and its allies in dire circumstances. Sumners is quoted in the article stating, “It is difficult to realize this very night that no intelligent person can venture the opinion that we will win this war,” that no one can confidently argue that the Allies will win the war. Sumners argues that Americans have been a “boastful people” and as a consequence careless. Sumners was shameless in exploiting the crisis of World War II to advance his racial agenda. Sumners, however, sees the dire situation of the war as an opportunity to advance his ideology. The article reports that Sumners, “… said he sees in bureaucracy a danger only secondary to that of the enemy without. ‘There are 1,300,000 people on the government’s payroll. I’d strip that power and give it back to the states.’” The news article then reports, “The audience then stood and cheered.” The article reports that Sumners has been warning about the decline of self-government for “the last twenty years” and quotes him saying, “We have been doing a perfect job of 17
“Address of the Honorable Hatton Sumners,” to New York State Chamber of Commerce at their meeting of April 4, 1946, “Bulletin of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York,” Vol. 37 No. 9, April 1946, pages 349 – 363. Magna Charta references page 355. Jazz age references page 357.
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internal destruction.” Sumners is quoted comparing the American government to the Nazis stating, “The only difference between that and Hitler’s government is in degree. We are a degenerate posterity of a great inheritance governmentally.” In a section immediately after titled “Traces Jazz Age Isms” the article reports what Sumners sees as the root cause of the “degenerate posterity” as follows: He traced the isms of the jazz age when “we were descended on a bunch of crackpots” who taught many things that left our children “woozy.”18 The people of Dallas and the surrounding area would understand Sumners’ use of the term “jazz” to association an idea with African Americans even without the references to terms such as “watermelon time” and the “jungle.” When white America first became aware of jazz in the 1920s it was denounced with racist stereotypes by leading national magazines. Maureen Anderson in her African American Review article, “The White Reception of Jazz in America,” reviews a 1917 article, “The Appeal of Primitive Jazz,” in the periodical Literary Digest and points out that the article, “finishes with an outright racial manifesto against the black man,” and explains how the author of the racist article represents “the jazz player as a contemporary savage.” Maureen Anderson’s in reviewing this article writes: More specifically the black jazz artists with his “savage,” “aggressive,” and “retard[ed]” personality resembles Gus, from the 1914 motion picture Birth of a Nation, a racial stereotype that portrays black men as hostile, ignorant, and aggressive, and a person whose only goal is to rape white women. Current Opinion in 1918 had an article, “Why ‘Jazz’ Sends Us Back to the Jungle,” with the first sentence stating, “One touch of ‘Jazz’ makes savages of us all.” Ann Shaw Faulkner’s 1921 article, “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation,” in the Ladies’ Home Journal opens with the question, “We have all been taught to believe that ‘music soothes the savage beast,’ but we have never stopped to consider that an entirely different type of music might invoke savage instincts.” According to Anderson:
18
Eschrich, Jones, “Bar Speakers Stress Need for War Effort,” Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, April 10, 194, page 33.
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The Etude, a popular magazine on music continued the discussion in 1924 with a special number that seems to pull all of the racist heavyweights into one issue in order to debunk jazz as a serious musical form. In the August 1924 Etude, the article “Where is Jazz Leading America: Opinions of Famous Men and Women In and Out of Music.” In the issue Dr. Frank Damorosch denounces jazz, with statements, “Jazz is to real music what the caricature is to portrait,” and “If jazz originated in the dance rhythms of the negro, it was at least interesting as the self-expression of a primitive race. When jazz was adopted by the highly civilized white race, it tended to degenerate it towards primitivity.” Damorosch also stated, “When a savage distorts his features and paints his face so as to produce startling effects, we smile at his childishness; but when a civilized man imitates him, not as a joke but in all seriousness, we turn away in disgust.”19 Jacob Hardesty in his History of Education Quarterly article, “Moral Outrage and Musical Corruption: White Educators’ Response to the ‘Jazz Problem,’” describes how the public feared youth being corrupted by African Americans by jazz music. His article has numerous quotes where jazz is denounced as being primitive or that of the jungle.20 Even without reading national periodicals, Sumners’ constituent would read denunciations of jazz in the Dallas Morning News. In a 1921 DMN article reports on the denunciation of jazz and jazz dancing by an evangelist. The fight to kill jazz was endorsed by Burke Culpepper in his sermon last night when he told 3,500 people that better music and less jazz which is “devil music,” serves to bring people closer to God. … Culpepper declared the dance is animalistic; … The shimmy and cheek-dancing is absolutely savage and is today corrupting the home and the school, the church and the Nation, he said.21 The Nov. 11, 1921 DMN had a large add by the Ladies Home Journal advertising its Nov. 1921 issue with the headline, “Jazz Must Go!” with the subtitle, “Is America dancing hellward? Is jazz madness driving us to ruin?”22 A previous full page ad by the Ladies Home Journal for this issue focused on the fact that they were serializing a Zane Grey western novel, but had a section to point out that the issue would also start a series of 19
Anderson, Maureen, “The White Reception of Jazz in America,” African American Review, Vol. 38 No 1, Spring 2004, pp. 135-145. 20 Hardesty, Jacob, “Moral Outrage and Musical Corruption: White Educators’ Responses to the ‘Jazz Problem,’” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 56 No. 4, Nov. 2014, pp. 590-617. 21 No author, “Culpepper Adds a Word to the List,” DMN, May 7, 1921, page 11. 22 Advertisement by Ladies Home Journal, DMN, Nov. 11, 1921, page 9.
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articles to warn parents about Jazz, stating, “We have given our young folks freedom; we are seeing it fall as they dance hellward by the jazz route.”23 A 1926 DMN article, “Texan Says Jazz is Threatening Morals of Boys and Girls,” has Fort Worth Judge Marvin H. Brown warning “Modern life has been swept with the tide of uncertain living and jazz madness that is threatening the moral fiber of the girls and boys of today,” in a speech in St. Louis, Missouri to the Southwestern Shoe Retailers’ Association.24 Will full page advertisements, national periodicals, and newspaper articles denouncing or on the subject of the denunciation of jazz Sumners’ constituents would have understood Sumners’ use of jazz as a negative term. However, over time the opinion about jazz had shifted and it was thought a desirable thing to lay claim to it. Robert J. O’Donnell 1935 DMN article, “Southern Darkey Made Harlem and Not Vice Versa,” informs the reader that Harlem is known “in Europe and the Orient,” and he wants the reader to know that jazz comes from the South, stating: It is true that Harlem’s population is composed of Negroes from all parts of this country and abroad, but the Southern Negro is responsible for that phase of activity, the colorful night life that has given Harlem a worldwide reputation. From the South has come its blues, its ragtime, its jazz, its comedy and its dances.25
However, by World War II the attitude towards jazz continues to change and denouncing jazz is ridiculed. The DMN in 1944 has an article by John Rosenfield, “Juvenile Delinquency Blamed on Jazz Music,” in which Artur Rodzinski, conductor of the New York Philharmonic Symphony is quoted saying things like, “Boogie-woogie music which appeals to the hepcats is one of the greatest causes of delinquency among American youth today.” These quotes are called by Rosenfield, “the most bigoted blast to come from the concert halls since the echt-deutscher, Karl Muck.” Rosenfield’s article at length argues that Rodzinski’s denunciations are without basis. Sumners’ use of jazz to denounce an ideology in 1946 was out of date and might have communicated to many that he was ready to retire which he did in 1946.
23
Advertisement by Ladies Home Journal, DMN, Nov. 1, 1921, page 11. No author, “Texan Says Jazz is Threatening Morals of Boys and Girls,” DMN, Dec. 2, 1926, page 15. 25 O’Donnell, Robert J., “Southern Darky Made Harlem Renowned and Not Vice Versa,” DMN June 28, 1935, page 12. 24
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As will be shown Sumners often mentioned jazz as a negative influence to stigmatize governmental policies and constitutional views he disagreed with showing that race encoded in denunciation of jazz infused his thinking about the constitution. Given that jazz was often used to stigmatize thinking he was opposed to and the invocations of Anglo-Saxon origins was used to legitimize the views he supported, his thinking about the constitution was conceptualized as a conflict between African American and AngloSaxon white cultures. The 1946 address to the New York State Chamber of Commerce mentioned earlier also made reference to the “vassalage of the states,” and gave forth his usual assertions regarding centralization of power. The conflict over the constitution is in Sumners’ thinking is a conflict between races. Though his language was less explicitly racist over the years, his racist agenda was always present.