I'm spending some time sorting through my notes and have come across a few things I wrote down which I wanted to share here.
Firstly a snippet from a 1989 newspaper article; the Charleston Messenger on Saturday 7th May reported about the new industrial buildings on Jenkins' farm ''where criminals and little vicious boys can be put to work for themselves and be made to earn their own bread by the sweat of their brow... it makes one feel that God is conducting the whole affairs of the Jenkins Orphanage'' - sadly a view reflected by many white people at the time, and ironic that the Reverend Jenkins himself was such a religious man and strove so hard to give these children a better chance in life than the hand they'd been dealt.
Jenkins was a very humble man and thanked 'good white and colored citizens, one and all' for their help in his achievements in the orphanage. One thing I came across in several different articles/reports was his concern for children's lungs and their health: he thought, and was probably correct, that children learning wind and brass instruments would strengthen their lungs and so make them less susceptible to lung-related illness.
'I promised God when I started out to build an orphanage that I would give the boys and girls plenty of corn bread and molasses, and other things whenever I could, and make them work for a living.' (Charleston Sunday News and Courier, May 16th, 1926). Nobody can deny that he achieved these promises. In 1895 the orphanage was damaged in a storm and Jenkins took some band members North to raise funds for repairs - he said 'I felt that I had rather die than return to Charleston without the money to cancel the debt.' (John Chilton, A Jazz Nursery: The Story of the Jenkins' Orphanage Bands).
If anyone has a Time magazine subscription, there is a great article on Daniel Jenkins here from August 26th, 1935 - http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,748914,00.html
I don't unfortunately so can't read it again, but I was able to read a photocopy of the article in the Avery research center in Charleston.
In the same year the Times article was written, an Associated Press sports writer called Edward J Nell wrote an article which again paints a clear picture of the orphans. He said 'a negro jazz band rolled up to Max Baer's camp at Speculator the other day and insisted on serenading him... there were fifteen of the funniest looking darkies you ever saw. They were from the Jenkins Colored Orphan asylum in Charleston, South Carolina... the truck was coming apart and the wheels were falling off... the negros played their hearts out. They were very happy.' - another stereotypical, mildly but probably unintentionally racist account written by a white man which portrays the poor conditions the orphans live in, but also the way they had been brought up by Jenkins to be grateful for what they had.
Chilton described Daniel Jenkins as a very striking man over six feet tall with a blue-black complexion. He called the children his 'black lambs' which has been used in many articles and references to the orphans.
Jenkins' life was not an easy one, as anyone might imagine. He was arrested in London in 1895 for creating a spectacle of himself by bringing over an all-black orphan band to play in the streets, and was accused of illegally exploiting children. (Sometimes these old laws surprise me how they could arrest a man for 'exploitation' and yet not too long before kept slaves themselves. The age-old irony.) His wife Lena Jenkins was very ill by the time a new secretary, Eloise Harleston, came to travel with the band as a secretary and publicist: a scandal was created when Eloise became pregnant with Jenkins' baby. She had to move to the UK to have the baby, a little girl named Olive. Eloise and Daniel married in 1912 after his wife Lena passed away. The band were also stranded in England for several months in 1914 when the first world war broke out and travel in and out of England was temporarily halted. Jenkins ended up lending some money to some fellow Americans who could not get home either as they were not allowed to use their foreign paper money until wartime relations settled.
And then there were scandals within the bands themselves: one member was imprisoned in 1919 after stabbing another man in the neck. Some very touching stories from the orphanage have been told by John Dowling, who had his hat spat in by a white man when he offered it round for collections. He remembered ''Now, we were schooled in every way and geared up for anything that might happen. I can remember the tears coming in my eyes as I tried not to cry. But I took my handkerchief, wiped out my hat, and turned to walk away. The man reached out and tugged my coat. When I turned around he put five dollars in the hat.''
I've found so many more of these stories and memories that give glimpses into the lives of these orphans, and of the music they they charmed so many hearts with.
'Born perhaps of the dire conditions in which they found themselves in, the orphans' music was infused with a kind of soulfulness that was not lost of the casual listener.' (The Jenkins Orphanage Bands Viewers Guide).
As I continue my research, I will write another post soon on the music the band played, their influences, and how they in turn have had a largely unacknowledged impact on the development of Jazz music in the rest of the US and the world.
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
Monday, 17 August 2015
The final leg
I am very sad to say that we have reached the end of our amazing trip! We arrived back in the UK on Wednesday morning, two days ago. I'm still a bit jetlagged!
This won't be the last post on my blog, as I'm going to keep it updated throughout my dissertation. I've barely even started reading through the material I gathered in the US so there will be so much more to write about.
Our short time in Birmingham Alabama was made wonderful by meeting up with musician, fig-grower, newspaper-producer, dancer, radio presenter, and all-round lovely guy Bob Friedman (a contact passed onto me by Professor Brian Ward, American studies professor at Northumbria University.) Bob set aside his entire day to drive us round the city, showing us the Birmingham Jazz Hall of Fame where he works, his Birmingham black radio museum project which will one day be a museum too, the Vulcan museum which had gorgeous views of the city, and taking us out for dinner to a BBQ place with his lovely friend Margo. Birmingham had even more Jazz than we realised, the Hall of Fame was a wonderful place to learn about its musical history. I even saw a photo of Julian Dash, once a member of the Jenkins orphanage band who I'd been reading about a few days before in Charleston, with Erskine Hawkins (co-writer of the song 'Tuxedo Junction'). Infact, Dash is also credited as writing part of the song too. Before we left to catch a train further south the next day we managed to catch some of the Jazz band rehearsals happening in the Carver Theater, also part of the Jazz hall of fame.
Me, Bob and Joseph infront of a model of Fess Whatley, a famous Birmingham Jazz musician.
New Orleans was amazing, of course. Labelled aptly as the 'big easy' and the birthplace of Jazz, it is impossible not to enjoy any length of time there. It's the only place I have previously visited in the USA, and I loved it so much I wanted to go back with Joseph. We shopped, partied, dined, experienced its famous nightlife on Frenchmen street (you might have heard of Bourbon Street, but we took the hostels advice and went to Frenchmen where the locals go, and heard some fantastic live music - Joseph signed up to play Bass at a jam session and got to play with the locals!), we made friends from all-over the world in our hostel, and went on a swamp tour down the Louisiana bayou - one of the highlights of the whole holiday.
Joe is on Bass guitar on the right
After New Orleans we flew back up to Washington D.C to have our final two nights with the Haskell's again, and spent them both celebrating Kerstin's birthday which was a great way to end the trip, having a final walk around the neighbourhood, and visiting Brookside gardens and butterfly house.
It's been the best five weeks of my life without a doubt. I miss America. I've always said I was born in the wrong continent. For all the hardships and the inequality that still goes on today, there is something about the country that gives you hope for a better life, and a taste for freedom. We all know Jefferson declared every man to be created free and equal, whilst owning slaves himself. And yet we also know that if many could have seen a way around the fear and uncertainty of what would happen if they freed their slaves, many would have done so very quickly. America is moving forwards, there is sadly no country on earth where every person is seen as equal on all aspects, though some are closer than others. We came across the gay Pride parade in Charleston by accident, and I knew it was the first year where same sex couples are allowed to marry in the state of South Carolina, having followed LGBT rights. It's slow, but it's progress, and America is moving in the right direction. In the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, I bought a badge that says 'Rosa sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so that Barrack could run. Barrack ran so that our children could fly' - and it's true, the history of America is a history of pain, and loss, and of terrible wars, but it is also one of hope. You can't walk five minutes in Washington D.C or Philadelphia without reading the words of the Declaration or the Constitution and remembering the principles that this great country was founded upon. The recent shootings in Charleston are a tragic reminder of how far race relations still have to go, but standing at the foot of the giant statue of Lincoln filled me with such a feeling of optimism that was hard to ignore.
I still have a lot of work to do on my project. My travel is over, but in the coming year I'll have to turn everything I've found into a dissertation, and I'm excited to do that. I'm still not entirely sure how I'll even turn this into a poster for the scholarship. I'll be up in Newcastle later this week for a poster-help day led by the scholarship team which should help!
I do have some answers but I also have even more questions. I applied for my scholarship stating that I was looking into audience reactions to Jazz music, and the hundreds of newspaper articles I've read have given me just that. Without looking through all my research, off the top of my head, I think it was the music and the Jazz that saved these people and brought them away from the negative connotations of slavery. I've found the musical heritage of America absolutely fascinating, how black people were able to be seen as more than just their skin colour; in a way, music allowed them to be seen as people. They were not just 'negros' to be looked down upon and pushed out of their homes. They had skills that impressed, and made white people want to emulate them. Perhaps this is why music is featured so heavily in the civil rights era of the 1960s; because music gives people a voice that otherwise might not be heard. I've often heard similar phrases to that, but to really understand you have to experience it yourself, and now I really understand what music can do. In a way I started my musical journey through American history by volunteering with Journey to Justice and being involved in events and the exhibition that showcased the power of music in 1960s America. And my personal journey of course has only just begun, I have the rest of my life to keep on learning, and to keep on singing and playing and delivering the joy of music to others.
If you've kept up with my blog, thanks for reading, and for your support, and thankyou to everyone who has made it possible for me and Joseph to travel to the USA this summer and have the best time of our lives!
And watch this space, I've only just started!
This won't be the last post on my blog, as I'm going to keep it updated throughout my dissertation. I've barely even started reading through the material I gathered in the US so there will be so much more to write about.
Our short time in Birmingham Alabama was made wonderful by meeting up with musician, fig-grower, newspaper-producer, dancer, radio presenter, and all-round lovely guy Bob Friedman (a contact passed onto me by Professor Brian Ward, American studies professor at Northumbria University.) Bob set aside his entire day to drive us round the city, showing us the Birmingham Jazz Hall of Fame where he works, his Birmingham black radio museum project which will one day be a museum too, the Vulcan museum which had gorgeous views of the city, and taking us out for dinner to a BBQ place with his lovely friend Margo. Birmingham had even more Jazz than we realised, the Hall of Fame was a wonderful place to learn about its musical history. I even saw a photo of Julian Dash, once a member of the Jenkins orphanage band who I'd been reading about a few days before in Charleston, with Erskine Hawkins (co-writer of the song 'Tuxedo Junction'). Infact, Dash is also credited as writing part of the song too. Before we left to catch a train further south the next day we managed to catch some of the Jazz band rehearsals happening in the Carver Theater, also part of the Jazz hall of fame.
Me, Bob and Joseph infront of a model of Fess Whatley, a famous Birmingham Jazz musician.
New Orleans was amazing, of course. Labelled aptly as the 'big easy' and the birthplace of Jazz, it is impossible not to enjoy any length of time there. It's the only place I have previously visited in the USA, and I loved it so much I wanted to go back with Joseph. We shopped, partied, dined, experienced its famous nightlife on Frenchmen street (you might have heard of Bourbon Street, but we took the hostels advice and went to Frenchmen where the locals go, and heard some fantastic live music - Joseph signed up to play Bass at a jam session and got to play with the locals!), we made friends from all-over the world in our hostel, and went on a swamp tour down the Louisiana bayou - one of the highlights of the whole holiday.
Joe is on Bass guitar on the right
Holding Elvis, a baby alligator, on the swamp tour.
Hostel buddies!
It's been the best five weeks of my life without a doubt. I miss America. I've always said I was born in the wrong continent. For all the hardships and the inequality that still goes on today, there is something about the country that gives you hope for a better life, and a taste for freedom. We all know Jefferson declared every man to be created free and equal, whilst owning slaves himself. And yet we also know that if many could have seen a way around the fear and uncertainty of what would happen if they freed their slaves, many would have done so very quickly. America is moving forwards, there is sadly no country on earth where every person is seen as equal on all aspects, though some are closer than others. We came across the gay Pride parade in Charleston by accident, and I knew it was the first year where same sex couples are allowed to marry in the state of South Carolina, having followed LGBT rights. It's slow, but it's progress, and America is moving in the right direction. In the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, I bought a badge that says 'Rosa sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so that Barrack could run. Barrack ran so that our children could fly' - and it's true, the history of America is a history of pain, and loss, and of terrible wars, but it is also one of hope. You can't walk five minutes in Washington D.C or Philadelphia without reading the words of the Declaration or the Constitution and remembering the principles that this great country was founded upon. The recent shootings in Charleston are a tragic reminder of how far race relations still have to go, but standing at the foot of the giant statue of Lincoln filled me with such a feeling of optimism that was hard to ignore.
I still have a lot of work to do on my project. My travel is over, but in the coming year I'll have to turn everything I've found into a dissertation, and I'm excited to do that. I'm still not entirely sure how I'll even turn this into a poster for the scholarship. I'll be up in Newcastle later this week for a poster-help day led by the scholarship team which should help!
I do have some answers but I also have even more questions. I applied for my scholarship stating that I was looking into audience reactions to Jazz music, and the hundreds of newspaper articles I've read have given me just that. Without looking through all my research, off the top of my head, I think it was the music and the Jazz that saved these people and brought them away from the negative connotations of slavery. I've found the musical heritage of America absolutely fascinating, how black people were able to be seen as more than just their skin colour; in a way, music allowed them to be seen as people. They were not just 'negros' to be looked down upon and pushed out of their homes. They had skills that impressed, and made white people want to emulate them. Perhaps this is why music is featured so heavily in the civil rights era of the 1960s; because music gives people a voice that otherwise might not be heard. I've often heard similar phrases to that, but to really understand you have to experience it yourself, and now I really understand what music can do. In a way I started my musical journey through American history by volunteering with Journey to Justice and being involved in events and the exhibition that showcased the power of music in 1960s America. And my personal journey of course has only just begun, I have the rest of my life to keep on learning, and to keep on singing and playing and delivering the joy of music to others.
If you've kept up with my blog, thanks for reading, and for your support, and thankyou to everyone who has made it possible for me and Joseph to travel to the USA this summer and have the best time of our lives!
And watch this space, I've only just started!
The Lincoln memorial
Thursday, 6 August 2015
'The flash and dash'
Hi!
I'm currently posting from our hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. Things are going good here in the US, we're just getting into the travelling life and now only have a week left which is sad. I knew that I wouldn't want to come back! We still have 8 days; today and tomorrow in Birmingham, 5 in New Orleans, and nearly three days back with our family friends in Washington D.C to finish off the trip.
I last posted after we'd been in Richmond on our first day, and a lot has happened since then, I'm not the best at posting regularly... Richmond's Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar Iron Works was wonderful, and made me very excited for studying my civil war module in September. We also paddled in the James river where British America was first founded: we walked along a pipeline underneath a traintrack over the river to find a sandy cove and some rocks where many people were sunbathing. It was supposedly an official trail, but it makes you wonder when you looked down at the river and realised that if someone fell off, as there were no railings, there is no way they'd get back onto the pipe which is a few feet above water level! Public safety in America doesn't seem to be #1 priority; last night leaving Charleston I asked the Greyhound bus driver where the seatbelts were, who just laughed and replied ''Watchyou want seatbelt's for? You plannin' on fallin' down or somethin'?'' !
The James River
Williamsburg was our next point of call, me and Joseph both agree it was one of the highlights of our holiday. The whole town is set in the 1770s in the midst of the American revolution, with all the staff dressed up in colonial period costumes and the shops set in the past.
We saw a fife and drum procession, an actor as Thomas Jefferson read out part of the Declaration of Independence (he held out his arm to me in a photo, such a gentleman), saw General George Washington ride in on his horse to give us an update on the revolutionary war, and watched colonial infantry fire cannons and muskets. It was a really special experience, and very different to living history museums I've been to in the UK such as Beamish.
An unpleasant 22 1/2 hour journey with a wait from 3am-8:15am in Fayetville, NC bus station, brought us to Charleston, which is a gorgeous southern city set right on the coast and surrounded by sea islands. Every street is lined with palmetto trees, the state symbol of South Carolina, and the houses along the harbour and old cobbled streets have huge French balconies and shutters. It reminded me a lot of New Orleans' French Quarter, where we will be in a few days. Charleston was of course the main focus of my research, and it certainly delivered. We managed to get out on the harbor and visit Mount Pleasant across the bay, and go to a few museums including the Confederate Museum, where the daughters of the Confederacy have collected a staggering amount of civil war memorabilia, the old Exchange and dungeon where prisoners and traitors to the crown were kept during the revolutionary war (there we learnt of Charleston's own 'tea party', overlooked in the shadow of Boston's), and the Old Slave Mart museum, the largest indoor site in the area where slaves were bought and sold.
The College of Charleston were extremely accommodating to me and actually gave Joseph and I four nights in one of their guest houses on campus, giving me easy access to their libraries, and they covered the costs for us, which was wonderful of them. The dean of the college libraries John White was my contact there, given to me from Ben Houston, a US history lecturer at my University. I met with John whilst doing my research and he's a great guy, we're very grateful to him and the College for the beautiful accommodation. We also got a ride in a police car because it was raining, from the public safety office where we picked the keys up, to our guest house, which was an experience! That's southern hospitality for you.
Me on the water taxi.
But most of the time was spent inside the College of Charleston's Addlestone library which houses the special collections, and the collections of South Carolina's History Society. I was able to find some wonderful information on the Jenkins orphanage band, including some amazing pamphlets written about the band that I could not get access to anywhere else. I have not had time to digest all the information that I found as that will be a job for when I get back to the UK as I work on my poster for my scholarship. I also spent some time in the Avery research center for African American history and culture (http://avery.cofc.edu/).
There me and Joseph met with the amazing Dr Karen Chandler who has done so much work and research on Jazz music in the area, and on the Jenkins orphanage band. Together with Jack McCray, sadly now passed, she set up the Charleston Jazz Initiative which both aims to uncover the incredible history of Jazz music in Charleston, as well as researching into the lives on the musicians who came from there and the fantastic careers some of them went on to have. Some of you reading might know trumpet player Cladys 'Jabbo' Smith, a talent rival to Louis Armstrong, or Cat Anderson who played in Duke Ellington's orchestra, both of whom were taught music at the Jenkins orphanage. The Avery center contained all of the original documents from the orphanage, including bills, receipts transactions and financial information, administration files, donations and funding records, records of every child to ever attend the orphanage, and Reverend Daniel Jenkins' death certificate. And of course, I found many wonderful photographs which I was able to photocopy (I've only put one in here of Daniel Jenkins, not sure yet about copyright for the others.)
Something very touching I read through were folders and folders of handwritten and type-written letters from mothers, family members and friends of orphans in the care of Jenkins. Some wrote asking if their child could attend and what the procedure was for admittance, as they had heard of how good the musical education provided at the school was. Some children who went there were not orphans.
I read in the records that in 1947, the average cost of feeding a child was $1.44 a day, or $43.23 a month. Daniel Jenkins himself said ''I promised God when I started out to build an orphanage that I would give the boys and girls plenty of corn bread and molasses, and other things whenever I could, and make them work for an honest living.'' A devoutly religious man, he made all children go to church on a Sunday no matter what. Sarah Finley Dowling, matron of the orphanage for over 50 years, wrote of them ''it would have done your heart good to see the children on Sunday going to church.' Sometimes the boys went to church wearing girls shoes or coats, 'they did take up a lot of room but they had a special place in that church... They went to church and they tried; they did what they were told to do.''
Reading these personal accounts, holding the documents in my hand, seeing Reverend Daniel Jenkin's personal replies to some of the mothers who inquired after places for their children, seeing photographs of the children dressed up in their uniforms and smiling for the camera because Jenkins had a vision that gave so many destitute children a home and a way of living, made the band come alive more than ever.
A few days ago I visited the original orphanage building on Franklin Street. Today the area around is quite run down. One of the first things you notice about the building is that it is situated right next door to the now derelict and quite spooky-looking town jail. I'd read the day before that the poor children could hear prisoners moaning and shouting at night.
The plaque outside the orphanage building.
Me outside the orphanage, 20 Franklin street, August 2015.
These children's story is a very important one and I am so excited to further research it.
Another quote from Sarah Finley Dowling perhaps sums up best how I feel even though I wasn't even there, though I can close my eyes and hear their music.
''The music lessons, the practice sessions, the beat of the drums, the shining horns, the colorful uniforms, the flash and dash, the excitement of those marching bands exist only in the reminiscences of those in whose lives they played such a memorable part.''
I'm currently posting from our hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. Things are going good here in the US, we're just getting into the travelling life and now only have a week left which is sad. I knew that I wouldn't want to come back! We still have 8 days; today and tomorrow in Birmingham, 5 in New Orleans, and nearly three days back with our family friends in Washington D.C to finish off the trip.
I last posted after we'd been in Richmond on our first day, and a lot has happened since then, I'm not the best at posting regularly... Richmond's Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar Iron Works was wonderful, and made me very excited for studying my civil war module in September. We also paddled in the James river where British America was first founded: we walked along a pipeline underneath a traintrack over the river to find a sandy cove and some rocks where many people were sunbathing. It was supposedly an official trail, but it makes you wonder when you looked down at the river and realised that if someone fell off, as there were no railings, there is no way they'd get back onto the pipe which is a few feet above water level! Public safety in America doesn't seem to be #1 priority; last night leaving Charleston I asked the Greyhound bus driver where the seatbelts were, who just laughed and replied ''Watchyou want seatbelt's for? You plannin' on fallin' down or somethin'?'' !
The James RiverWilliamsburg was our next point of call, me and Joseph both agree it was one of the highlights of our holiday. The whole town is set in the 1770s in the midst of the American revolution, with all the staff dressed up in colonial period costumes and the shops set in the past.
We saw a fife and drum procession, an actor as Thomas Jefferson read out part of the Declaration of Independence (he held out his arm to me in a photo, such a gentleman), saw General George Washington ride in on his horse to give us an update on the revolutionary war, and watched colonial infantry fire cannons and muskets. It was a really special experience, and very different to living history museums I've been to in the UK such as Beamish.
An unpleasant 22 1/2 hour journey with a wait from 3am-8:15am in Fayetville, NC bus station, brought us to Charleston, which is a gorgeous southern city set right on the coast and surrounded by sea islands. Every street is lined with palmetto trees, the state symbol of South Carolina, and the houses along the harbour and old cobbled streets have huge French balconies and shutters. It reminded me a lot of New Orleans' French Quarter, where we will be in a few days. Charleston was of course the main focus of my research, and it certainly delivered. We managed to get out on the harbor and visit Mount Pleasant across the bay, and go to a few museums including the Confederate Museum, where the daughters of the Confederacy have collected a staggering amount of civil war memorabilia, the old Exchange and dungeon where prisoners and traitors to the crown were kept during the revolutionary war (there we learnt of Charleston's own 'tea party', overlooked in the shadow of Boston's), and the Old Slave Mart museum, the largest indoor site in the area where slaves were bought and sold.
The College of Charleston were extremely accommodating to me and actually gave Joseph and I four nights in one of their guest houses on campus, giving me easy access to their libraries, and they covered the costs for us, which was wonderful of them. The dean of the college libraries John White was my contact there, given to me from Ben Houston, a US history lecturer at my University. I met with John whilst doing my research and he's a great guy, we're very grateful to him and the College for the beautiful accommodation. We also got a ride in a police car because it was raining, from the public safety office where we picked the keys up, to our guest house, which was an experience! That's southern hospitality for you.
Me on the water taxi.
But most of the time was spent inside the College of Charleston's Addlestone library which houses the special collections, and the collections of South Carolina's History Society. I was able to find some wonderful information on the Jenkins orphanage band, including some amazing pamphlets written about the band that I could not get access to anywhere else. I have not had time to digest all the information that I found as that will be a job for when I get back to the UK as I work on my poster for my scholarship. I also spent some time in the Avery research center for African American history and culture (http://avery.cofc.edu/).
There me and Joseph met with the amazing Dr Karen Chandler who has done so much work and research on Jazz music in the area, and on the Jenkins orphanage band. Together with Jack McCray, sadly now passed, she set up the Charleston Jazz Initiative which both aims to uncover the incredible history of Jazz music in Charleston, as well as researching into the lives on the musicians who came from there and the fantastic careers some of them went on to have. Some of you reading might know trumpet player Cladys 'Jabbo' Smith, a talent rival to Louis Armstrong, or Cat Anderson who played in Duke Ellington's orchestra, both of whom were taught music at the Jenkins orphanage. The Avery center contained all of the original documents from the orphanage, including bills, receipts transactions and financial information, administration files, donations and funding records, records of every child to ever attend the orphanage, and Reverend Daniel Jenkins' death certificate. And of course, I found many wonderful photographs which I was able to photocopy (I've only put one in here of Daniel Jenkins, not sure yet about copyright for the others.)
Something very touching I read through were folders and folders of handwritten and type-written letters from mothers, family members and friends of orphans in the care of Jenkins. Some wrote asking if their child could attend and what the procedure was for admittance, as they had heard of how good the musical education provided at the school was. Some children who went there were not orphans.
I read in the records that in 1947, the average cost of feeding a child was $1.44 a day, or $43.23 a month. Daniel Jenkins himself said ''I promised God when I started out to build an orphanage that I would give the boys and girls plenty of corn bread and molasses, and other things whenever I could, and make them work for an honest living.'' A devoutly religious man, he made all children go to church on a Sunday no matter what. Sarah Finley Dowling, matron of the orphanage for over 50 years, wrote of them ''it would have done your heart good to see the children on Sunday going to church.' Sometimes the boys went to church wearing girls shoes or coats, 'they did take up a lot of room but they had a special place in that church... They went to church and they tried; they did what they were told to do.''
Reading these personal accounts, holding the documents in my hand, seeing Reverend Daniel Jenkin's personal replies to some of the mothers who inquired after places for their children, seeing photographs of the children dressed up in their uniforms and smiling for the camera because Jenkins had a vision that gave so many destitute children a home and a way of living, made the band come alive more than ever.
A few days ago I visited the original orphanage building on Franklin Street. Today the area around is quite run down. One of the first things you notice about the building is that it is situated right next door to the now derelict and quite spooky-looking town jail. I'd read the day before that the poor children could hear prisoners moaning and shouting at night.
The plaque outside the orphanage building.
These children's story is a very important one and I am so excited to further research it.
Another quote from Sarah Finley Dowling perhaps sums up best how I feel even though I wasn't even there, though I can close my eyes and hear their music.
''The music lessons, the practice sessions, the beat of the drums, the shining horns, the colorful uniforms, the flash and dash, the excitement of those marching bands exist only in the reminiscences of those in whose lives they played such a memorable part.''
Sunday, 2 August 2015
Jenkins used the fear of black crime to get support for his orphanage
Just a quick post about a heartbreaking paragraph I just read in Walter J. Fraser's CHARLESTON! CHARLESTON! The history of a Southern City (1989), whilst I do some research in the College of Charleston's Addlestone Library.
The end of the nineteenth century in Charleston saw a rise of crime covering assaults, robberies, prostitution, illegal trafficking and gambling, with fights and stabbings frequent, and bootlegging preferred by many poor blacks over paying for the expensive goods. Wealthy African-Americans often requested the protection of police because they were afraid to leave their homes incase they were broken into by their own race.
According to Fraser, this heightened fear of black crime was used by Reverend Daniel Jenkins to gain funds for his newly founded orphanage, a perspective I have not come across before. A paragraph I found reads as follows:
'Fear of black crime helped a black Baptist minister, Daniel J. Jenkins, persuade the City Council to support the orphanage he had recently founded. The ingenious Reverend Mr. Jenkins argued that he was keeping potential juvenile offenders off the streets and making ''breadwinners out of beggars and loafers,'' and in 1897 the city council voted $250 to support the fifty-four ''colored orphans'' lodged at the Jenkins orphanage. The News and Courier believed he would provide a place where ''the small...thieves, crap shooters, and razor pushes could...learn an honest trade,'' and annually the city government continued to support the orphanage.' - p.34.
I found it touching that Jenkins, a black man himself, had to almost lie and say things he didn't agree with to get white funding for his orphans, which just shows the racial climate of the time period.
The city annually donated around $1,000 to Jenkins, yet the upkeeping of the orphanage cost $20,000 each year: in 1912 donations from the North and collections by the Jenkins orphanage band exceeded the city's donation by ten times. As you might expect, the two orphanages for white children in Charleston were given much more money from the city.
On a slightly more positive note, out of the seventy three lynchings that took place in the state of South Carolina between 1882 and 1900, none were in Charleston. Which isn't to say that the city wasn't highly segregated and unequal.
Yay a photo!
The end of the nineteenth century in Charleston saw a rise of crime covering assaults, robberies, prostitution, illegal trafficking and gambling, with fights and stabbings frequent, and bootlegging preferred by many poor blacks over paying for the expensive goods. Wealthy African-Americans often requested the protection of police because they were afraid to leave their homes incase they were broken into by their own race.
According to Fraser, this heightened fear of black crime was used by Reverend Daniel Jenkins to gain funds for his newly founded orphanage, a perspective I have not come across before. A paragraph I found reads as follows:
'Fear of black crime helped a black Baptist minister, Daniel J. Jenkins, persuade the City Council to support the orphanage he had recently founded. The ingenious Reverend Mr. Jenkins argued that he was keeping potential juvenile offenders off the streets and making ''breadwinners out of beggars and loafers,'' and in 1897 the city council voted $250 to support the fifty-four ''colored orphans'' lodged at the Jenkins orphanage. The News and Courier believed he would provide a place where ''the small...thieves, crap shooters, and razor pushes could...learn an honest trade,'' and annually the city government continued to support the orphanage.' - p.34.
I found it touching that Jenkins, a black man himself, had to almost lie and say things he didn't agree with to get white funding for his orphans, which just shows the racial climate of the time period.
The city annually donated around $1,000 to Jenkins, yet the upkeeping of the orphanage cost $20,000 each year: in 1912 donations from the North and collections by the Jenkins orphanage band exceeded the city's donation by ten times. As you might expect, the two orphanages for white children in Charleston were given much more money from the city.
On a slightly more positive note, out of the seventy three lynchings that took place in the state of South Carolina between 1882 and 1900, none were in Charleston. Which isn't to say that the city wasn't highly segregated and unequal.
Saturday, 25 July 2015
My excitement over the museums and history here
Hi!
It's been a while since I posted, to be honest in the two and a half weeks I've been in the US I haven't done too much research because I haven't got to the place yet where most of my research will be (Charleston).
So far our trip has included Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia, and we are currently in Richmond, Virginia.
We arrived in the US on the 9th July and stayed 5 days in D.C with a family friend, Hilary, who is absolutely lovely and immediately made us feel at home. She has taken us to so many places we didn't expect to go to, along with her son and daughter-in-law Jake and Kerstin who've been wonderful too, driving us around and giving us so many experiences we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. We're so grateful to them! We went back to D.C after going to NYC and Philly so had a further 5 days with them earlier this week.
Just some of the non-History things we've been up to include Baltimore and Ohio Railroad museum, visiting Luray caverns in Virginia, driving up the Shenandoah Valley, going to a huge shopping mall (I fell in love with Macy's), being at the top of the Rockerfeller centre in NYC, taking a cruise to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island, the Natural History museum in NYC, Philadelphia art museum, an indoor swim centre in Maryland, D.C national botanical gardens, visiting the National Harbor near Alexandria and going up the big wheel, babysitting for Kerstin and Jake's two boys, going to Harper's Ferry where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, seeing wild beavers, turtles, deer, hawks and eagles, going to an adventure centre and climbing high ropes and whizzing through trees on zip wires, walking along part of the Appalachian Trail, and eating some very amazing food (my personal highlights are the Mexican grill Chipotle, and Waffle House which I've read about in books and always wanted to go to one!)
So yeah, it's been an amazing and packed two weeks!
In terms of history, all the places we've gone to have been an American History lovers dream, I have loved every second. D.C's Smithsonian museums are all free, an incredible thing when you think of the status of museums in the UK. There are 19 of them in total covering all subjects such as air and space, science, art, and history; we visited some of the art and sculpture ones, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National American History museum. Both had fantastic displays and exhibits inside and put you right into history itself. The highlight for me was the third floor of the American history museum which was dedicated to America at war, and covered the Revolutionary and Civil wars, as well as the war of 1812 with GB, the French and Indian war, both World Wars, the Cold War, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan... it covered everything you can think of to do with military history, and the displays were absolutely fantastic and included lots of original artefacts, video, pictures, and interactive stations. By the time we got to the third floor we were nearly museum-ed out; I wish we had started at the top and dedicated the most time to that exhibition. Washington monument and Lincoln's memorial are of course must-visits in D.C and were the very first things we saw. It was very humbling to stand beneath the giant statue of Lincoln and read his famous speeches such as the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address on the walls beside him. I admit I may have bought out the gift shop buying Lincoln memorabilia. I'm a bit of a fan. (Who isn't?) Though we didn't get to see inside Fords Theatre where he was shot, we saw it from the outside; it looks quite unsuspecting and ordinary, but knowing what happened inside is enough to make anyone take a few seconds to look.
Philadelphia has a lot of importance in America's history. We had a guided tour round Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed and sat in the very room it was signed in, saw Thomas Jefferson's house where he lived when he wrote the document, saw an exhibit in George Washington's house and read about the lives of his slave servants, got to see the Liberty Bell and learn about its significance in so many people's fights for liberty, visited the Philadelphia Historical society, and saw innumerable statues and memorials to the first presidents' and their memorable feats. All of the above mentioned were free!
Today in Richmond we had a free tour around the Virginia State Capitol, which doesn't look much from the outside, but I found it to be probably the most amazing place we have visited so far. Richmond was the capital city of the confederacy for most of the Civil War, but fell to the Union soldiers in 1865 and was set on fire by its own inhabitants as they fled the city. The original building of the capitol escaped intact and was restored in the early 20th century, and inside is absolutely beautiful. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson himself, and was the very first building in the United States to be modelled based on classical architecture; a new style of building for a new republic and its outlook based on self-governance and liberty. It contains the original State Senate Chamber, the House of Delegates Chamber which still meets and was where the Bill of Rights was ratified into the US constitution, the Virginia Supreme Court, and the General Assembly which still meets in the Capitol every January. The guide who showed us around today was so knowledgeable and had memorized an inceredible amount of information. I know I live in the wrong continent. The sort of career I want, combining my love for American history and the museum industry, can't be found in the uk!
This is the only statue of George Washington made out of a mould whilst he was still alive, and is now in the capital building.
I could go on and on for pages about the amazing places we've visited, but I should probably stop there. This blog is supposed to be about my own research!
I spent two days in the Library of Congress this week, the largest library in the world. And it is huge. I talked to a research helper when I arrived and we registered to get ID cards printed out, and he recommeded the places I should go for information. I started in the Performing Arts reading room and a guy there helped me use the library's search facilities for articles on the Jenkins House Band I am focusing on. I found some fascinating stuff and was able to print them out for free. A few articles were by Dr Karen Chandler who is the current director of the Charleston Jazz Initiative where I am visiting to conduct research in a few weeks. I have been in touch with Dr Chandler and will be meeting up with her, so finding her work was exciting. There is also a great article on Booker T. Washington's visit to Charleston and how his path crossed with the band, and some work by James Arthur Briggs, and Frederick J Taylor, on research into black music which discuss the orphanage band. The motion picture and television reading room did not have much relevant for my project, and neither did the photographs and prints room, despite me spending a few hours searching through drawers of stereographs taken of President T. Roosevelt and Taft's inaugarations, to try and see if the orphanage band was anywhere in the photographs as I know they played at those events! I didn't find them anywhere.
The newspaper and periodicals room held much more of interest, and I was able to print out many relevant newspaper articles using the library's subscription databases which I could not access at home. My favourite article that I found (yes, I have a favourite) was a very racist and critical piece on the band's presence in London, which excited me because it was great to have an opinion of the band written from an English point of view. I know that the band travelled outside the US to perform but have not been able to find any other accounts of their travels so far.
This is the Library of Congress' main reading room.
There aren't many photos on this blog yet because most of the photos I'm taking are on my camera and until I get back home in mid August I can't upload any from there.
I know that Charleston holds much more specific information I can access that will be more helpful for my research than the Library of Congress did. I had hoped to find more, and was hoping to find some photographs. But I guess I haven't done too bad finding what I have here.
In summary, apologies for the long post, we are having a really amazing time, and I absolutely can't wait to see what the rest of the US south has in store for us! We're only in Virginia and some people here have such strong southern accents it's hard to understand them sometimes. But everyone here is friendlier by far than the more northern cities: people just getting on a bus or walking past in the street have said hi to us and asked how we are! I can conclude that it is even friendlier here than the North of England.
Hopefully you aren't too bored if you made it to the end... thanks for reading.
Look out for my next post!
Emily
It's been a while since I posted, to be honest in the two and a half weeks I've been in the US I haven't done too much research because I haven't got to the place yet where most of my research will be (Charleston).
So far our trip has included Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia, and we are currently in Richmond, Virginia.
We arrived in the US on the 9th July and stayed 5 days in D.C with a family friend, Hilary, who is absolutely lovely and immediately made us feel at home. She has taken us to so many places we didn't expect to go to, along with her son and daughter-in-law Jake and Kerstin who've been wonderful too, driving us around and giving us so many experiences we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. We're so grateful to them! We went back to D.C after going to NYC and Philly so had a further 5 days with them earlier this week.
Just some of the non-History things we've been up to include Baltimore and Ohio Railroad museum, visiting Luray caverns in Virginia, driving up the Shenandoah Valley, going to a huge shopping mall (I fell in love with Macy's), being at the top of the Rockerfeller centre in NYC, taking a cruise to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island, the Natural History museum in NYC, Philadelphia art museum, an indoor swim centre in Maryland, D.C national botanical gardens, visiting the National Harbor near Alexandria and going up the big wheel, babysitting for Kerstin and Jake's two boys, going to Harper's Ferry where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, seeing wild beavers, turtles, deer, hawks and eagles, going to an adventure centre and climbing high ropes and whizzing through trees on zip wires, walking along part of the Appalachian Trail, and eating some very amazing food (my personal highlights are the Mexican grill Chipotle, and Waffle House which I've read about in books and always wanted to go to one!)
So yeah, it's been an amazing and packed two weeks!
In terms of history, all the places we've gone to have been an American History lovers dream, I have loved every second. D.C's Smithsonian museums are all free, an incredible thing when you think of the status of museums in the UK. There are 19 of them in total covering all subjects such as air and space, science, art, and history; we visited some of the art and sculpture ones, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National American History museum. Both had fantastic displays and exhibits inside and put you right into history itself. The highlight for me was the third floor of the American history museum which was dedicated to America at war, and covered the Revolutionary and Civil wars, as well as the war of 1812 with GB, the French and Indian war, both World Wars, the Cold War, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan... it covered everything you can think of to do with military history, and the displays were absolutely fantastic and included lots of original artefacts, video, pictures, and interactive stations. By the time we got to the third floor we were nearly museum-ed out; I wish we had started at the top and dedicated the most time to that exhibition. Washington monument and Lincoln's memorial are of course must-visits in D.C and were the very first things we saw. It was very humbling to stand beneath the giant statue of Lincoln and read his famous speeches such as the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address on the walls beside him. I admit I may have bought out the gift shop buying Lincoln memorabilia. I'm a bit of a fan. (Who isn't?) Though we didn't get to see inside Fords Theatre where he was shot, we saw it from the outside; it looks quite unsuspecting and ordinary, but knowing what happened inside is enough to make anyone take a few seconds to look.
Philadelphia has a lot of importance in America's history. We had a guided tour round Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed and sat in the very room it was signed in, saw Thomas Jefferson's house where he lived when he wrote the document, saw an exhibit in George Washington's house and read about the lives of his slave servants, got to see the Liberty Bell and learn about its significance in so many people's fights for liberty, visited the Philadelphia Historical society, and saw innumerable statues and memorials to the first presidents' and their memorable feats. All of the above mentioned were free!
Today in Richmond we had a free tour around the Virginia State Capitol, which doesn't look much from the outside, but I found it to be probably the most amazing place we have visited so far. Richmond was the capital city of the confederacy for most of the Civil War, but fell to the Union soldiers in 1865 and was set on fire by its own inhabitants as they fled the city. The original building of the capitol escaped intact and was restored in the early 20th century, and inside is absolutely beautiful. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson himself, and was the very first building in the United States to be modelled based on classical architecture; a new style of building for a new republic and its outlook based on self-governance and liberty. It contains the original State Senate Chamber, the House of Delegates Chamber which still meets and was where the Bill of Rights was ratified into the US constitution, the Virginia Supreme Court, and the General Assembly which still meets in the Capitol every January. The guide who showed us around today was so knowledgeable and had memorized an inceredible amount of information. I know I live in the wrong continent. The sort of career I want, combining my love for American history and the museum industry, can't be found in the uk!
This is the only statue of George Washington made out of a mould whilst he was still alive, and is now in the capital building.
I could go on and on for pages about the amazing places we've visited, but I should probably stop there. This blog is supposed to be about my own research!
I spent two days in the Library of Congress this week, the largest library in the world. And it is huge. I talked to a research helper when I arrived and we registered to get ID cards printed out, and he recommeded the places I should go for information. I started in the Performing Arts reading room and a guy there helped me use the library's search facilities for articles on the Jenkins House Band I am focusing on. I found some fascinating stuff and was able to print them out for free. A few articles were by Dr Karen Chandler who is the current director of the Charleston Jazz Initiative where I am visiting to conduct research in a few weeks. I have been in touch with Dr Chandler and will be meeting up with her, so finding her work was exciting. There is also a great article on Booker T. Washington's visit to Charleston and how his path crossed with the band, and some work by James Arthur Briggs, and Frederick J Taylor, on research into black music which discuss the orphanage band. The motion picture and television reading room did not have much relevant for my project, and neither did the photographs and prints room, despite me spending a few hours searching through drawers of stereographs taken of President T. Roosevelt and Taft's inaugarations, to try and see if the orphanage band was anywhere in the photographs as I know they played at those events! I didn't find them anywhere.
The newspaper and periodicals room held much more of interest, and I was able to print out many relevant newspaper articles using the library's subscription databases which I could not access at home. My favourite article that I found (yes, I have a favourite) was a very racist and critical piece on the band's presence in London, which excited me because it was great to have an opinion of the band written from an English point of view. I know that the band travelled outside the US to perform but have not been able to find any other accounts of their travels so far.
There aren't many photos on this blog yet because most of the photos I'm taking are on my camera and until I get back home in mid August I can't upload any from there.
I know that Charleston holds much more specific information I can access that will be more helpful for my research than the Library of Congress did. I had hoped to find more, and was hoping to find some photographs. But I guess I haven't done too bad finding what I have here.
In summary, apologies for the long post, we are having a really amazing time, and I absolutely can't wait to see what the rest of the US south has in store for us! We're only in Virginia and some people here have such strong southern accents it's hard to understand them sometimes. But everyone here is friendlier by far than the more northern cities: people just getting on a bus or walking past in the street have said hi to us and asked how we are! I can conclude that it is even friendlier here than the North of England.
Hopefully you aren't too bored if you made it to the end... thanks for reading.
Look out for my next post!
Emily
Wednesday, 8 July 2015
Setting forth
(The tune to sing in your head for this blog post is 'Setting Forth' by Eddie Vedder.)
Hi! I'm Emily Needle, a second year undergraduate student reading History at Newcastle University in England, and I have a particular interest in American History. I found my love for it at GCSE (aged 15) when studying a course on the American West. Cowboys and Indians and all the other stereotypical stuff. And no other area of History has ever been as exciting to me since.
Hi! I'm Emily Needle, a second year undergraduate student reading History at Newcastle University in England, and I have a particular interest in American History. I found my love for it at GCSE (aged 15) when studying a course on the American West. Cowboys and Indians and all the other stereotypical stuff. And no other area of History has ever been as exciting to me since.
I'm really fortunate to have been awarded a vacation scholarship from my University which gives me a grant of money to carry out some research on a project I have designed myself. So I guess I just made this blog to document my trip. I will be in America for 5 weeks, or 37 days, (9th July - 15th August 2015) and my very wonderful other half Joseph is going with me to keep me in check, and for us to be able to have a holiday at the same time!
My research project utilizes the Jenkins Orphanage Band from Charleston (South Carolina) as a case study to explore some of the bigger questions surrounding the development and dissemination of Jazz in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century United States. I will (hopefully) examine the ethnic and economic profile of Jazz audiences in an attempt to assess the reception of Jazz, and the extent to which Jazz, developed in the segregated environment of the ‘Jim Crow’ South, was able to cross class and racial divisions among national audiences.
(I may have copied and pasted some of that from my application...)
The title of my project is 'From Rags Through Race to Ragtime: The Jenkins Orphanage Band and American Audience Response to Jazz in Turn of the Century Charleston' - hence the blog title.
The band itself was formed in the 1890s and came out of an orphanage founded in Charleston in 1891 by Reverend Daniel Joseph Jenkins. He discovered some young black boys sleeping on the street who said they had no parents, and he took them home and gave them some food. This continued, with more and more boys from around the city coming for food, until he managed to purchase a warehouse and turned it into Jenkins Institute. To raise funds for the orphanage Jenkins asked for people to donate old instruments, and the boys began to play on the streets of Charleston. At first they played traditional American tunes that the people would know, but the influence of their ancestors and the African Gullah rhythms they had been taught naturally infused in the music as they played. This new sound was something the American people had not heard before, and they loved it. The popular dance 'The Charleston' originated in this city and came from an series of steps known to African-Americans as they danced to this new type of music which eventually became known as 'Jazz'. The band soon became so popular that they toured all round the US, and visited London and Paris. Musicians such as Jazz trumpeters William 'Cat' Anderson and Jabbo Smith were Jenkins orphanage alumni. The band disbanded in the 1980s.
It is this band that forms the core of my research. So little is known or has been written about them and I feel it is so important for their story to be heard. As a musician myself and a lover of Jazz music, it seemed natural for me to combine my love of American history and music to discover the history of these orphan boys who captured so many hearts. The backdrop of the US South during this period is one of extreme racial tension and violence. The civil war ended in 1865 and slavery was deemed unconstitutional, and yet black people's lives were scarcely much better than their ancestors' had been. Laws against their freedom and citizenship were introduced and the increasingly segregated South became known as 'Jim Crow'. It fascinates me how the American public could love this band so much, and yet at the same time a few streets away white mobs were murdering black people for crimes such as simply living in the same area as them. Finding a newspaper from 1911 advertising a concert the Jenkins band were doing in New York, underneath an article about the first lynching in Pennsylvania the previous day, really put everything in perspective for me.
Of course only a few weeks ago 9 people were shot in one of Charleston's oldest black churches, by a white man associated with beliefs about white supremacy. This hate and racial prejudice still continues. It is bizarre and wrong that in 2015 the subject I am researching as 'history' has been brought alive again in such a raw and painful way.
I am travelling down the East Coast this summer to try and answer some of the questions I have about the connections between Jazz and race, and to hopefully enlighten other people too. This research will form the basis of my dissertation as I start my 3rd and final year of my undergraduate degree in September. For the vacation scholarship I have to produce an academic poster from my findings. I don't pretend to be an expert on music, or Jazz, but my boyfriend is studying music at the Royal Northern College of Music and knows a lot more than I do and so it will be so helpful to have him with me.
We will be visiting Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia (PA) , Richmond (VA), Williamsburg (VA), Charleston, Birmingham (Al) and New Orleans.
I'm not sure how often I'll post, and there is a chance of course that I will find not much of interest. But I doubt that. Though there are no academic books I can find about Jazz music in Charleston and on the Jenkins Orphanage Band, I know the material is all there, waiting to be studied and collected. From the research I have been doing online in the last few weeks there is a mountain of information available. I will be visiting the Library of Congress, the archives in Birmingham, and in Charleston the Avery Research Centre, the Charleston Jazz Initiative, and the College of Charleston collections which includes the documents from the Jenkins Institute.
Everyone I have been in touch with about my research has shown such kindness and given me a lot of help and advice that I am very grateful for. I will be meeting some incredible people whilst in the US who are very high in their respective fields, and I am humbled to be starting out my research and following in their shoes as a mere undergraduate.
To anyone reading this who is a first or second year student at Newcastle University, I highly recommend that you look into the vacation scholarships and apply for one. It's a really incredible opportunity! And of course you decide yourself what you are going to study, so you can do it on anything.
If after my project, just a few more people are aware and appreciative of the impacts of Charleston on the history of Jazz music, and on race relations, then I'll be happy.
So please follow my blog to keep up-to-date with what me and Joseph are up to in the US! This project really means a lot to me as you can probably tell. And we are incredibly, incredibly excited for this trip!
Here, have a photo so you know what we look like!
Emily x
The title of my project is 'From Rags Through Race to Ragtime: The Jenkins Orphanage Band and American Audience Response to Jazz in Turn of the Century Charleston' - hence the blog title.
The band itself was formed in the 1890s and came out of an orphanage founded in Charleston in 1891 by Reverend Daniel Joseph Jenkins. He discovered some young black boys sleeping on the street who said they had no parents, and he took them home and gave them some food. This continued, with more and more boys from around the city coming for food, until he managed to purchase a warehouse and turned it into Jenkins Institute. To raise funds for the orphanage Jenkins asked for people to donate old instruments, and the boys began to play on the streets of Charleston. At first they played traditional American tunes that the people would know, but the influence of their ancestors and the African Gullah rhythms they had been taught naturally infused in the music as they played. This new sound was something the American people had not heard before, and they loved it. The popular dance 'The Charleston' originated in this city and came from an series of steps known to African-Americans as they danced to this new type of music which eventually became known as 'Jazz'. The band soon became so popular that they toured all round the US, and visited London and Paris. Musicians such as Jazz trumpeters William 'Cat' Anderson and Jabbo Smith were Jenkins orphanage alumni. The band disbanded in the 1980s.
It is this band that forms the core of my research. So little is known or has been written about them and I feel it is so important for their story to be heard. As a musician myself and a lover of Jazz music, it seemed natural for me to combine my love of American history and music to discover the history of these orphan boys who captured so many hearts. The backdrop of the US South during this period is one of extreme racial tension and violence. The civil war ended in 1865 and slavery was deemed unconstitutional, and yet black people's lives were scarcely much better than their ancestors' had been. Laws against their freedom and citizenship were introduced and the increasingly segregated South became known as 'Jim Crow'. It fascinates me how the American public could love this band so much, and yet at the same time a few streets away white mobs were murdering black people for crimes such as simply living in the same area as them. Finding a newspaper from 1911 advertising a concert the Jenkins band were doing in New York, underneath an article about the first lynching in Pennsylvania the previous day, really put everything in perspective for me.
Of course only a few weeks ago 9 people were shot in one of Charleston's oldest black churches, by a white man associated with beliefs about white supremacy. This hate and racial prejudice still continues. It is bizarre and wrong that in 2015 the subject I am researching as 'history' has been brought alive again in such a raw and painful way.
I am travelling down the East Coast this summer to try and answer some of the questions I have about the connections between Jazz and race, and to hopefully enlighten other people too. This research will form the basis of my dissertation as I start my 3rd and final year of my undergraduate degree in September. For the vacation scholarship I have to produce an academic poster from my findings. I don't pretend to be an expert on music, or Jazz, but my boyfriend is studying music at the Royal Northern College of Music and knows a lot more than I do and so it will be so helpful to have him with me.
We will be visiting Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia (PA) , Richmond (VA), Williamsburg (VA), Charleston, Birmingham (Al) and New Orleans.
I'm not sure how often I'll post, and there is a chance of course that I will find not much of interest. But I doubt that. Though there are no academic books I can find about Jazz music in Charleston and on the Jenkins Orphanage Band, I know the material is all there, waiting to be studied and collected. From the research I have been doing online in the last few weeks there is a mountain of information available. I will be visiting the Library of Congress, the archives in Birmingham, and in Charleston the Avery Research Centre, the Charleston Jazz Initiative, and the College of Charleston collections which includes the documents from the Jenkins Institute.
Everyone I have been in touch with about my research has shown such kindness and given me a lot of help and advice that I am very grateful for. I will be meeting some incredible people whilst in the US who are very high in their respective fields, and I am humbled to be starting out my research and following in their shoes as a mere undergraduate.
To anyone reading this who is a first or second year student at Newcastle University, I highly recommend that you look into the vacation scholarships and apply for one. It's a really incredible opportunity! And of course you decide yourself what you are going to study, so you can do it on anything.
If after my project, just a few more people are aware and appreciative of the impacts of Charleston on the history of Jazz music, and on race relations, then I'll be happy.
So please follow my blog to keep up-to-date with what me and Joseph are up to in the US! This project really means a lot to me as you can probably tell. And we are incredibly, incredibly excited for this trip!
Emily x
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