Browse Items (24 total)

This photograph shows blues musicians Gabriel Brown and Rochelle French in Eatonville, Florida in 1935. Zora Neale Hurston introduced Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax to Brown. Lomax’s recordings for the Library of Congress led Brown into a…

Folklorist Alan Lomax recorded this selection in 1935 in Eatonville, Florida. The selection is broken into two parts demonstrating Florida A&M College graduate Gabriel Brown’s exceptional guitar talent. Brown alludes to working-class hero John Henry…

African American performers created Dixieland jazz from the blues and ragtime in the early twentieth century. This 1982 recording of jazz pioneer Ida Goodson demonstrates a transitional style between traditional blues and the more polished jazz style…

African American businesses and homes in Jacksonville were restricted to segregated districts within the city. The Knights of Pythias Hall, depicted in this 1943 photograph, formed the center of Jacksonville’s LaVilla neighborhood. Known as the…

The Lenape Bar was a LaVilla hotspot in Jacksonville between the 1920s and 1940s. It hosted performances by Ray Charles and other important artists who toured Florida between the 1920s and 1950s. Jazz artists who performed at the Ritz Theatre or…

The Red Bird Café was situated at the center of the historic Frenchtown neighborhood in Tallahassee throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A popular dance club and bar, the Red Bird Café hosted both local acts and groups touring the Circuit. Activists held…

The African American neighborhood centered on West 45th St. and Moncrief Road in Jacksonville was an enclave of segregation on the outskirts of the city established in the late nineteenth century. The Two Spot, pictured here in the 1940s, hosted…

The widespread popularity of big band jazz allowed Americans in some cities in the 1920s and 1930s to cross racial boundaries and enjoy the music together. Southern cities were not as permissive as northern cities, but the large military presence in…

Miami’s business and political elite developed “slum clearance” plans during the 1930s designed to remove the city’s African American population beyond the city limits. While New Deal housing projects created new segregated areas in Dade County in…

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…