Art Blakey’s The Freedom Rider is not only a testament to the symbiotic relationship between jazz and the civil rights movement. It’s a sonic rallying cry to stand and protest. Recorded in 1961 for Blue Note Records, this album is a rhythmic and sonic history lesson encapsulating an era fueled by the activism required to effect societal change.

In 1961, a group of courageous people called the Freedom Riders risked life and limb, challenging segregation in the Deep South with their model of nonviolent resistance and strategic planning. They rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating.

The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American civil rights movement, and called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the south. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs of counter-protestors attack the riders without intervention. In some places, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux Klan chapters and other white people opposing the actions and allowed mobs to attack the riders.

Blakey’s percussive narrative pays homage to their resilience as he leads his world-class band to join him in a call to action that still resonates decades later. Trumpeter Lee Morgan, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Jymie Merritt are all in lockstep with Blakey. Blakey sounds more emotionally invested here than usual because he literally had skin in the game. Art Blakey was beaten badly by police in a racially charged confrontation while on tour during the 1940s, requiring surgery and the placement of a steel plate in his head. This record wasn’t just musical or political—it was personal. 

The Freedom Rider not only commemorates a pivotal historical movement but also underscores the enduring power of music as a vehicle for social change. It’s a reflection on the past that can inspire future generations, and a reminder that the movement isn’t over, and neither is the fight. And that as long as there’s rhythm, there’s resistance. 

Music: From 1961, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers “The Freedom Rider.”

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In the 1930s, Midtown Manhattan clubs were packed with the bourgeoisie, tuxes and evening gowns, tables and banquettes of rich white people drinking champagne, often entertained by Black performers borrowed from the Harlem music scene.

It was putting on the ritz, it was dancing cheek to cheek. ‘Same-colored’ cheeks.

It was the embodiment of the phrase ‘café society‘, coined by the one of the scene’s wittier celebrities Claire Booth Luce, a darling toast of Broadway.

But what would become one of the New York music world’s most fertile spots for musical innovation was far, far downtown from the ‘real’ nightlife — at 1 Sheridan Square in the West Village.

Café Society was a New York City nightclub open from 1938 to 1948 on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. It was managed by New Jersey shoe salesman Barney Josephson. Over the course of its ten-year run — and that of a second location, placed at 58th and Park — Josephson and his partners would host dozens of soon-to-be jazz stars, in many cases paving the way to their success. Josephson created the club to showcase African American talent and to be an American version of the political cabarets he had seen in Europe. As well as running the first racially integrated night club in the United States, Josephson chose the name to mock the rich patrons of more upscale nightclubs. Josephson trademarked the name Café Society, and he also advertised the club as “The Wrong Place for the Right People”.

The club prided itself on treating black and white customers equally, unlike many venues, such as the Cotton Club, which featured black performers but barred black customers except for prominent black people in the entertainment industry. The club featured many of the greatest black musicians of the day, often imposing a strongly political bent. Billie Holiday first sang “Strange Fruit” there; at Josephson’s insistence, she closed her set with this song, leaving the stage without taking any encores, so that the audience would be left to think about the meaning of the song. Lena Horne was persuaded to stop singing “When it’s Sleepy Time Down South”, Pearl Bailey was fired for being “too much of an Uncle Tom”, and Carol Channing was fired for an impersonation of Ethel Waters.

Relying on the keen musical judgment of John Hammond, the club’s “unofficial music director”, Josephson helped launch the careers of Ruth Brown, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, Big Joe Turner, and Sarah Vaughan.

Josephson’s club was the scene of numerous political events and fundraisers, often for left-wing causes, both during and after World War II. In 1947, Josephson’s brother Leon Josephson was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which led to hostile comments from columnists Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell. The FBI even staked out the club, photographing patrons, and Hoover soon ‘opened a file’ on Barney himself. Both locations of Café Society were closed by 1950.

But Josephson managed to pick himself up and soon opened another influential downtown jazz club, the Cookery, which stayed open into the 1980s.

Music: From 1940, Joe Sullivan and His Cafe Society Orchestra with “Solitude.”

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In her short life, Billie Holiday performed with a type of genius that is still imitated by singers today. She was best known for sad songs about heartache and pain from losing love. One thing people don’t say about Billie Holiday was that she was a protest singer. While there was plenty to sing about, these weren’t the kind of songs Billie Holiday was known to sing. In 1939, though, she made a recording of a song that brought out into the light one of America’s dirtiest secrets, what experts have called the “window to the soul of white supremacy and African American life in the South”—lynching.

It’s difficult today to imagine what life was like during the years when lynching was popular in the South. Black men lived in constant terror that someone might accuse them of a crime, and that a white mob would grab them, take them against their will to a tree, and lynch them. Lynching wasn’t just a way for white people to keep Black people in line. In some places, it was treated like a sport. Often at a lynching, photographers would take pictures and then sell them door to door. There were collectable post cards showing Black men hanging from trees with white people standing around and smiling. They sold for a dime or a dollar a piece in drugs stores and pharmacies. This is the kind of horrific behavior that Billie Holiday hoped to stop with her new song. And she felt that it wasn’t enough just to sing it for liberals in New York.

“Strange Fruit” originated as a protest poem against lynchings by Abel Meeropol and published under the title “Bitter Fruit” in January 1937. It was inspired by Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana.

Holiday said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, she did so because its imagery reminded her of her musician father Clarence Halliday, who fell ill with a lung disorder while on tour in Texas and was refused treatment at a local hospital. He was treated in the colored ward of the Veterans Hospital, but by then pneumonia had set in and without antibiotics, the illness was fatal. Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday’s face; and there would be no encore. During the musical introduction to the song, Holiday stood with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.

Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about the song, but the company feared reaction by record retailers in the South, as well as negative reaction from affiliates of its co-owned radio network, CBS. When Holiday’s producer John Hammond also refused to record it, she turned to her friend Milt Gabler, owner of the Commodore label. Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” for him a cappella and moved him to tears. Columbia gave Holiday a one-session release from her contract so she could record it; Frankie Newton’s eight-piece Café Society Band was used for the session in an arrangement by Newton. Because Gabler worried the song was too short, he asked pianist Sonny White to improvise an introduction. It was recorded on April 20, 1939. The 1939 recording eventually sold a million copies, becoming the biggest-selling recording of Holiday’s career.

Music: From 1939, Billie Holliday sings “Strange Fruit.”

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