Music and Politics
Reverend C.K. Steele speaks at a rally outside of the Red Bird Café in Tallahassee’s Frenchtown neighborhood in 1971. Reverend Steele was an important leader in the Tallahassee civil rights movement. As head of the Inter-Civic Council, an organization made up of ministers, professionals, and business leaders, Rev. Steele led the watershed 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott. Steele served as pastor of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church and was a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Council.
Performance and politics meet in two ways in this 1971 photo, as “Daddy Twofoot” performs for a political rally crowd outside of the Red Bird Café in Tallahassee’s Frenchtown neighborhood. By the 1970s, many artists on the Circuit were overtly political. Artists like James Brown and Joe Tex promoted civil rights and Black Nationalism in the early 1970s. Circuit stalwart Joe Tex joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Hazziez in 1972. Local bands like Daddy Twofoot often shared these political sensibilities.
On July 30, 1967, a confrontation between police and two African American men at a popular night spot in Riviera Beach escalated to a full-scale riot. The riot lasted through the night, and a local lumber company was set ablaze. Local leaders called popular entertainment venues like the Blue Heron a “public nuisance” and attempted to shut them down throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A quote from a nightclub manager in the 1977 Palm Beach Post highlighted the difficulty of their task. “If you close (the Blue Heron),” he said, “you’re going to have to go right down the block and close the next club and the next club.” Small local venues like the Blue Heron were popular stops on the Circuit.
The Circuit and politics were linked in African American communities and existed side-by-side on newspaper pages. Comedians performed regularly on the Circuit. This ad promotes comedian Slappy White, who later appeared on Sanford and Son and other television shows. White performed alongside club singer Phyllis Branch in this weeklong booking at the Hampton House Club in Brownsville. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, musicians Cannonball Adderley and LaVern Baker, and other African American celebrities stayed at the Hampton House Motel. The Motel’s jazz club was a popular stop on the Circuit.
This cartoon appeared in the November 2, 1971 issue of the Florida Sentinel Bulletin, an African American newspaper in Tampa. The artist’s depiction of an African American family watching a white family on television highlights the political importance of popular culture in race politics. Columnist Johnny Jacobs wrote an entertainment report on “Tampa’s Night Beat” in the same issue. Jacobs praised a recent performance by singer Joe Tex at the local “Club Oasis.” Popular entertainment and politics were near neighbors in African American newspapers like the Florida Sentinel Bulletin.