Music against Racial Segregation during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Term: Musicians or Pioneers against Racial Discrimination?
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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8672-5149
Abstract
This article studies the growth of songs against racial segregation under the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945). Driven by a favorable creative environment but also by the new conditions provided by the New Deal, different blues, jazz and gospel artists dared to address barely explored issues linked to everyday racial separation and racial violence.
Consequently, the purpose of this research is to compile the existing recorded songs on this topic and to examine the portrait that these compositions offered of racial segregation.
In order to do so, this article analyzes the lyrical contents of the songs that include references to segregation and to physical violence against African Americans. Ultimately, this will help to determine which specific aspects of these matters were denounced as well as to know in what way these songs reflected the reality in which they were developed and if they were pioneering works.
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racial segregation, songs, music, Roosevelt, New Deal
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