Jazz Segregation: Black Artists Excluded from Venues They Made Famous

Through the 1940s and 1950s, Black jazz musicians who create bebop and swing — Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis — perform in segregated venues where Black audiences are not admitted, receive far lower pay than white bandleaders performing their arrangements, and are denied hotel accommodations requiring sleeping on tour buses. Columbia Records and major labels pay Black artists flat session fees while white artists recording their songs receive royalties. Radio stations refuse to play records by Black artists while rewarding white artists who cover them.