Jackson at Booker T. Washington High School (1928–40)

I am currently most interested in Jackson’s tenure as music director at Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta. His activities at Washington, the first public high school for African Americans in the state of Georgia, touch on several fields that I happen to have outside expertise in, although the issue of race literally colors (ha ha) the significance of Jackson’s work in each case. I thought I would make a list of my interests as they pertain to this period in Jackson’s career, and explore the unique perspective that Jackson brings to the table.

First, some context. Booker T. Washington High School opened in 1924 under the auspices of the Atlanta Board of Education. The elegant four-story building was designed by the renowned (white) Atlanta architect Eugene C. Wachendorff, and a statue of Washington—venerated for promoting African American education and uplift after the Civil War—was placed in front. The statue is a perfect replica of that which stands at the Tuskegee Institute, a black college founded by Washington in Alabama. According to the Tuskegee Institute’s website, the statue “shows Dr. Washington pulling away from a crouching half-concealed former slave the veil of ignorance and superstition. The larger than life image of Dr. Washington is an expression of the level of his hopes and dreams. The former slave is sitting on an anvil and next to a plow which represent the value Dr. Washington placed on manual labor. The man kneeling represents strength and prowess. The book represents the strength of mind.”

Dedication to racial uplift was at the heart of Jackson’s work as music director and can be understood as the impetus for all of the activities he carried out under the Washington High School banner.

And now for my motivations.

1. Music Education

A poorly defined topic, to be sure, but here is the question I want to ask: Why do specific communities, both now and in the past, value music education? And how might the answer to that question be different for black and white communities? Uplift, in the sense of social climbing, is certainly a motivator for white communities. But so is nostalgia and the fear of progress, which certainly does not characterize black education. For now I will let this question stand as a theme for future investigation.

2. Music Appreciation

This is related to the issue of music education, but applies more to adult communities than to school children, and focuses on listening instead of creation. The white music appreciation movement was in full swing by the 1920s, and boasted books, a series of Victor records, and eventually radio programs. It had a number of goals: to combat the rise of jazz, to promote good morals, to preserve the musical property of an embattled elite class, etc. Whatever the motivation, there was a genuine fear that, if steps were not taken, the great tradition of canonized art music would be lost and society would suffer as a result.

I am certain that many black musicians felt this same affection for European art music (Jackson himself was playing the Largo from Dvořák’s New World Symphony in the famous photo), but they had bigger concerns. A mastery of European art music, either as performer or listener, was a gateway to eventual equality with whites. It was a way to simultaneously curb the baser elements of black culture and to demonstrate to white onlookers that “the race” was worthy of respect and inclusion.

Booker T. Washington High School took its role as a beacon of African American progress seriously, and sought to educate the community beyond its walls. A newsletter addressed “To our patrons and friends” and dated January 24, 1929, lays out the importance of this mission:

In Graham Jackson, the High School has one of the most accomplished organists in the South. He is a wonderfully gifted young man - chuck full of the Spirit of Music. With him, music is a passion. He moves and lives with the masters and would be very unhappy out of their company. We want to diffuse this spirit. We are very anxious that all of the people, botht [sic] the grown-ups and the children learn the finer points of music.

This Organ Recital is our Extension Course in Music Appreciation. It should become an Atlanta Institution - a part of the religious and cultural life of our people. You can make it so by attending yourself and by bringing your friends.

It is a fine hour for the parent and child to spend together. It is a fine hour for friends to meet and commune with the greatest composers of classical and sacred music.

The Organ Recital is here to stay because you will attend, and because hundreds like you will attend, and Atlanta Will Indeed Become a City Of Music Lovers.

The language used here is largely universal: the letter presents the claim that the music of “the masters” is objectively great and the hope that all citizens of Atlanta will come to love it. One phrase, however, reveals that the object of these recitals is somewhat more focused, and that phrase is “our people.” The purpose here is not really to transform the entire city of Atlanta. It is to lift up and improve the African American population.

Did white people attend these recitals at the African American Bethel Church (AME) in downtown Atlanta? I would very much like to know. The letter makes no reference to race whatsoever, and the audience is described only as “the music lovers of the city.”

3. Community Singing

How could I ever pursue a research project that did not include community singing? But we’re in luck.

I have a program from a concert given by the music departments of Washington High School and D.T. Howard Junior High School, another black public institution in Atlanta (both, incidentally, attended by Martin Luther King, Jr.). The concert took place on May 5, 1939, at the City Auditorium as part of the Atlanta Music Festival: an annual celebration of African American musicians performing mostly European music that dated back to 1910 and was founded as a means of racial uplift! Maybe all of these topics are the same.

The program opened with a community singing rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (Negro National Anthem), words by James Weldon Johnson (1899) and music by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1900). The poem was written in honor of Booker T. Washington and first recited by school children in honor of Lincoln’s birthday. It is still sung by children at the Atlanta Music Festival today:

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
let our rejoicing rise,
high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea
sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us,
sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
bitter the chast’ning rod,
felt in the day that hope unborn had died;
yet with a steady beat,
have not our weary feet,
come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
we have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
where the white gleam of our star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
thou who has by thy might,
led us into the light,
keep us forever in the path, we pray
lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee,
least our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee,
shadowed beneath the hand,
may we forever stand,
true to our God,
True to our native land.

Later in the program the audience was invited to join in singing the last stanza of the spiritual “Great Day.” No text was provided.

4. Something Funny

Because, after all, what is a research project without something funny?

On September 14, 1935, Jackson received the following letter from the Superintendent of High Schools:

Dear Sir:

Dr. Sutton has given permission for you to attend the convention to which you have been invited for the week beginning September 23. This is the second request I have had this fall for you to be absent from school. I hope you will have the courtesy to decline offers to perform during school hours when it interferes with your school work. It is not fair to Dr. Sutton or myself for pressure to be brought to bear on us for you to be absent from school.

Yours very truly,
H. Reid Hunter

Posted Without Comment

From an Atlanta Constitution spread about a society wedding, published March 2, 1941:

Ok, I can’t help commenting a little. Playing for white society events—weddings, debuts, fetes, music club meetings, and parties of all description—was a huge part of Jackson’s career. The society pages of the Constitution name him as the star entertainer on hundreds of occasions. Images like this, however, remind us that Jackson did not enter white society on an equal footing, no matter how much respect he garnered with his prodigious skill.

It’s All Been Done

Apparently I am not the first person to compare photographs of Jackson playing the accordion. Check out this spread from Life magazine, published May 28, 1951:

The text reads:

On April 12, 1945 Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson had been scheduled to play his accordion for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Ga. Jackson did play for the President as his coffin was carried from the Warm Springs Foundation. Life’s picture (April 23, 1945) of Jackson fingering his accordion while tears streamed down his cheeks was one of the most eloquent tributes among the many tendered F.D.R.

Six years have passed and, partly because of Life’s picture, former Navyman Jackson’s fortunes have changes with them. Today he runs a radio program of his own from his home at Atlanta, Ga. But every Thanksgiving and Christmas Jackson goes back to play for the patients at the Warm Springs Foundation which his late chief helped develop.

And the caption beneath the lower photo:

Jackson smiles today, now that he is a radio performer in Atlanta. He modeled his house after Roosevelt’s Little White House in Warm Springs.

And a note from me:

Jackson was already a radio performer, a recording artist, and a successful entertainer long before the death of FDR and the initial publication of this iconic photograph. I consider it highly unlikely that Life magazine had any significant impact on his career, and I can demonstrate the he smiled plenty before 1951.

A Frustration

This is my first time working with newspaper articles that have been clipped out and collected in a scrap book, and it’s really driving me insane! If I ever become famous and have to start clipping articles about myself I will be sure to preserve the date and publication. It will save a lot of trouble for future generations.

Eventually I will have to figure out exactly where each of these articles come from. I’m expecting to find a few answers with ProQuest, but I also expect that I will have to expand my research toolbox to get the information I need. Some will probably remain unidentified.

But my main concern right now is whether these article come from white newspapers or African American ones, which seems to me to be very important. I expect that some of the variations in tone depend on that fact. I feel entirely certain, for example, that Harold Martin—from the last post—was writing for a white audience. Similarly, when authors express gratitude for the work Jackson is doing to further the education and advancement of “the race,” or when Jackson himself writes a column on that subject, I feel sure that the audience is black.

I also expect that the publication’s audience influenced the choice of photographs. For example, this photograph of Jackson accompanied an article by the musician himself that might address fellow African Americans:

The article, although much deteriorated and difficult to read, praises the power of radio and encourages readers to keep and open mind to all kinds of music. The incorporation of a dignified photograph might be explained by the fact that Jackson speaks directly through the article. (But exactly which publications would have allowed Jackson to speak?) I have not found the source yet, but I simply have to.

Correction and Elaboration

I’m already making mistakes!

Last week I claimed that this photo dated from the 1920s:

I clipped it from an undated article that was filed along with materials from the 1920s, and Jackson looks young enough in the photograph that it could easily date from that period of his life. However, I read the article more closely and followed some leads, and I can now confirm that this photograph was published in 1946.

The article contains a verbal portrait of Jackson that accompanies the photograph quite nicely:

Graham Jackson, the dark troubador who can cake [sic] and accordion utter sounds which the angels might envy, came by the office the other day lugging a huge, strangely shaped leader case that looked as if it might contain a medium-sized piano. In a sort of happy, hysterical daze Graham set his burden down, unlatched it and extracted from it what was probably the most magnificent accordion ever seen in these parts. Approximately the size of a double cash register, it was a glistening beauty of shining black metal and snowy ivory and shining chromium.

Fondling it as tenderly as a new-born baby, Braham [sic] sung it around his neck, threw back his head, rolled his eyes and broke into that great song from Traviata which goes—well, I can’t put down how it goes, but it is one that sets the heart to singing and causes the feet to beat a rhythm on the floor.

The imagery here is not original: a happy, even hysterical, demeanor, accompanied by rolling eyes, dancing, and physical abandon have long been the property of the minstrel.

The narrative continues to explain how Jackson came into possession of so fine an instrument (it was a gift from Winthrop Rockefeller). Throughout, the author—one Harold Martin—portrays Jackson in childlike terms. He explains that Jackson was so excited at the prospect of getting a new accordion that he couldn’t sleep, but instead ran straight downtown after a late night party and waited, “with his nose against the glass of the music stores,” for opening hour. His only response when Rockefeller offered to purchase a top-end accordion for $1,500? “Where I come from a man can get a house and a lot for $1,500.”

Maybe that really is exactly what Jackson said. Taken in context, however, the comment suits Martin’s casting of Jackson as a naive, exhuberant, unworldy black musician—a man with a disturbing degree of musical talent but little self control and no real comprehension of civilized life. Jackson is irrevocably an outsider. We smile at his wide-eyed excitement, laugh at his antics, and wonder at his gifts.

The article concludes as follows:

That night Graham played his new instrument for the debut party [of Rockefeller’s niece] at the Piping Rock Club. He played all night again, and at daylight, Mr. Rockefeller put him on the plane bound for home.

He didn’t even sleep when he got here. He went straight home from the airport and broke out his new accordion, and walked up and down the neighborhood laughing and singing and playing for the neighbors.

Pause for Refreshment

I just found this. Moments ago. It seems to date from the early 1940s and is clearly integral to any discussion of Jackson in image.

Some Early Photos

The famous Life photo presents a dignified and moving image of Jackson, who weeps with the nation at the loss of a beloved president and personal friend. His emotion is genuine. It is also human in a way that largely transcends race, although I would argue both that it is possible to read Jackson as a stereotypically subservient and child-like figure in this image and that such a reading probably helps to explain its enormous popularity.

Jackson’s recollection of the photograph being taken was included in his New York Times obituary: “The photographer stumbled over my foot and looked up. He saw my face and saw those tears coming down my cheek, and he just reached around on his shoulder and got one of his cameras and - blip - and thought no more of it.” Unless Jackson had reinvented the circumstances with the passage of time, therefore, this is an unstaged photograph.

As a popular entertainer, Jackson was photographed many time throughout his career, both formally and candidly. The range of published photographs is very interesting, and I intend to scrutinize them closely. I want to begin with two photographs that anticipate the Life image—that is to say, two early photographs of Jackson with his iconic accordion.

First, a publicity photo that Jackson used in the 1920s:

The persona embodied here is unmistakable: Jackson is a jovial, simplistic minstrel. His wide grin shows off white teeth, while his tilted head counterbalances the humorously unwieldy accordion. This is a carefully staged portrait of course, but a later photograph suggests that it does indeed capture Jackson’s performing persona.

This photograph was published as part of a 1938 spread in Life magazine. It accompanied an account of life at the Warm Springs Foundation, established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to provide care for paraplegics. In the photograph, Jackson is providing some after-dinner entertainment for FDR, his wife, and some friends:

The quality of my scan is poor, but Jackson’s character is so powerful that it still bursts out of the image. His role as minstrel is evident, from his exaggerated pose to his enormous grin to his rolling eyes. But is this really a candid photo? There’s no way to be sure. Since it features the president, the likely answer is no.

Not all images of Jackson played up the minstrel character, even early in his career. For example, here is a much more dignified portrait of Jackson from 1934:

He is missing his accordion, of course, which I believe encourages the minstrelesque portrayal. For dignified images of Jackson with his accordion we will have to wait until after the death of FDR.

Into the Public Eye

If you Google “Graham W. Jackson,” most of the results are of this famous photograph, taken by a Life magazine photographer at FDR’s funeral:

The caption reads as follows:

Tears stream down the cheeks of accordion-playing Chief Petty Officer (USN) Graham Jackson as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s flag-draped funeral train leaves Warm Springs, Ga., April 13, 1945.

Purpose

Greetings! My name is Esther, and I am a musicologist. I specialize in American popular music of the first half of the 20th century. I am particularly interested in participatory music making, especially sing-alongs. This project, however, arose out of opportunity and will be somewhat different from any I have pursued before.

Graham W. Jackson was a versatile African American entertainer whose career spanned the middle of the 20th century. He played piano, organ, and accordion. He fronted a dance band, taught music in the schools, played on the airwaves, toured extensively as a Navy recruiter during WWII, and was greatly admired by several U.S. presidents. He was also involved in the music appreciation movement, which is a special interest of mine.

I recently discovered that the Graham W. Jackson papers are held by the Atlanta History Center, located about an hour from the institution where I teach. I came across the listing when I was there performing research for another project, and was fascinated by the description of Jackson’s career and the extent of the holdings. Last week I returned to have a look. The papers are indeed amazing—I only got eight folders in to the first of many boxes. I have also begun to peruse the extensive repository of articles concerning Jackson in the Atlanta Constitution.

I don’t yet know what form this project will take. I want to use this blog as a forum to explore the many interesting themes that have already arisen in my research and to organize my ideas. I also want to create a public record of this extraordinary figure in American music history, on whom very little information is widely available. I will be posting all of the photos I come across and documenting the first few decades of his career in as much detail as possible.