On December 5th, 1928, Colombian laborers and their families gathered at Ciénaga’s train station to negotiate the terms of their strike against the United Fruit Company with the Governor of Magdelena. Just before midnight, the Colombian military opened fire on the crowd as the government declared a state of siege in the banana zone.​ This atrocity, ending the morning of December 6th, is known as the Banana Massacre.¹ 

The Popularity of Bananas

The 1920s was an era known for excessive consumer culture fueled by increased advertising and affordable goods. The banana offers a case in point – it grew in popularity in the 1920s due to the United Fruit Company’s vigorous advertising campaign.  The company began advertising bananas in 1917 when they already had established plantations in Central and South American countries. They used the “logic” form of advertising to sell the exotic fruit, having scientists promote the nutritional value of bananas, and saw banana sales increase. Advertising in America would change forever when Edward Bernays began targeting people’s emotions instead of logic. With this new mode of advertising proving to be highly successful, the U.F.C. launched the “Great White Fleet” cruiser that brought Americans to tour United Fruit’s plantations in Latin America while also transporting bananas. This endeavor would prove to be very successful in increasing the banana market.² 

Visitors saw a theatrically created plantation that appeared to be a humane and peaceful place. In reality, U.F.C. plantations were corrupt, and the laborers were subjected to terrible work conditions.³ The United Fruit Company did not value their workers; laborers were only regarded as replaceable cogs in their machines. For this reason, there are few photos of the actual workers who labored at the UFC’s plantations. Indeed, most photos from the UFC during this era are of cars, the bananas themselves, and infrastructure.⁴ This makes the photo of the strike organizers particularly rare. The image was not meant to be available to the general public, as its primary purpose was to inform the operations of the management and security forces. ⁵

The Strike

Colombia was home to several United Fruit plantations, where banana workers were subjected to long hours and low pay. Raul Eduardo Mahecha, a Partido Socialista Revolucionário (PSR) representative, led the strike that preceded the massacre.⁶ With the support of fellow PSR members Ignacio Torres Giraldo and Maria Cano, Mahecha led a lecture tour of the Banana Zone discussing labor rights. This inspired significant support for reform, with the plantation workers’ concerns regarding the contract system, their work hours, and the abuses they and their families were subjected to by their supervisors. For example, a worker named Aristides Lopez Rokano stated: “We worked from six in the morning until eleven and then from one in the afternoon until six…The contractor paid the salary and reserved up to thirty percent for himself.” At the same time, the wives and daughters of the workers suffered sexual violence at the hands of the UFC employees. Inspired by the words of Mahecha, workers gathered on October 6, 1928, to discuss these frustrations, and unionist Erasmo Coronel proposed the idea of a strike. The workers created nine demands for better working conditions, citing parts of the Colombian Constitution to support these demands.⁷ In this way, these efforts were less an act of communism and more an attempt to modernize labor relations in Colombia. Their demands included receiving real money payments and transitioning to a six-day work week. ⁸

The Massacre

American corporate interference in international relations would not have been possible before World War I when there was more suspicion of corporate power. However, by the 1920s, the American public idealized corporations and businessmen, as Americans largely viewed them as instrumental parts of the war effort.⁹ The American government in the 1920s supported corporations like the United Fruit Company to expand their markets and acquire raw materials by applying economic, diplomatic, and military pressure. This was particularly common in Latin America. The pressure could be subtle or indirect. However, in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Santo Domingo, the U.S. government took bold action to protect corporations’ interests by sending troops.¹⁰

The United Fruit Company thus leveraged its power in the United States government to ensure that the strike in Colombia was brought to what would be a bloody end. Considering that the strikers’ demands would have resulted in higher operation costs for the company, the U.F.C. utilized its ties with the United States government to have the Marine Corps threaten to invade Colombia if the Colombian government did not protect the company’s interests and end the strike.¹¹ In this way, the Banana Massacre was the direct result of American military threats and pressure against the Colombian government. 

The strike gained national attention in the United States, although it conveniently ignored the terrible conditions that led to the strike. Prominent newspapers like the New York Times focused on how the strike threatened Americans in Colombia, as opposed to what this strike and the actions of the U.F.C. had meant for Colombians. For example, the Times published a map entitled “Region Affected by Colombia Strike” on December 6, 1928, after the massacre had been committed. Instead of using this visualization of the Banana Zone as an opportunity to highlight the crimes committed by the Colombian military on the strikers, the map’s caption highlights how the strike was endangering the “lives and property of Americans.”¹² This demonstrates how the strike was viewed as a harmful hindrance to the small number of Americans located in and exploiting the Banana Zone. This is a testament to the successful efforts to cover up the massacre in American media. 

The strike lasted two months, and on December 5th, the Governor of Magdalena summoned the strikers to Ciénaga to settle the strike. Strikers gathered in the thousands, and at the same time, the government issued Decree Number 1 that ordered the military, led by Carlos Cortes Vargas, to open fire on the unarmed strikers and their families.¹³ It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 2,000 people were killed in Ciénaga’s train station that night.¹⁴ Despite this, by daybreak, only nine bodies were left behind. Some strikers theorized that the nine bodies were symbolic of the nine demands of the strikers. The Colombian military did not end there, with officers killing over 1,000 strikers. Laborers responded by destroying several of United Fruit’s buildings.¹⁵

Liberal politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan brought significant attention to the disastrous conduct of the military during the massacre in Colombia. Union leader Ignacio Tores Giraldo quipped that Gaitan “concluded the investigation” on the massacre less than a day after it had been committed. One primary issue Gaitan raised regarding the massacre was that it was pre-planned, indicating that there would be little chance for the strikers to protect themselves. Furthermore, those who were only injured after the military opened fire were killed by officers with bayonets, and the dead bodies were thrown into the sea so they could not be found and identified afterward. While committing this atrocity, the drunken military officers, including Cortes Vargas, sexually violated the women in Cienaga. The overarching qualm Gaitan held was that the army acted not in the interest of Colombia but of the United States. The press widely spread Gaitan’s allegations and only increased the disapproval of this massacre.¹⁷ 

The Legacy of the Banana Massacre

In January 1929, 600 strikers were detained and charged with criminal offenses in military courts. Of these 600, 31 were sentenced to prison, ranging from 2-25 years. All of the sentenced were freed in 9 months, after the advocacy of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan during a parliamentary debate. The former strikers only continued their activism, with one of the freed individuals, Alberto Castrillon, announcing his run for the presidency as the PSR party candidate on the symbolic date of December 6, 1929. At the same time, Cortes Vargas and the Minister of War Ignacio Rengifo were demoted from their positions, indicating the decline of the Conservative elite in Colombian politics.¹⁸ Therefore, although the massage successfully crushed the strike, it had the reverse effect in the long term. It offered Colombian workers and unionists a story and martyrs to further their movement and contributed to the end of the conservative hegemony. However, the polarization between Liberals and Conservatives that resulted from this massacre is considered to be the cause of La Violencia, a bloody civil war in Colombia that lasted from 1948-1958.¹⁹

The Banana Massacre was further ingrained into Colombian culture as it was featured in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1967 Nobel Prize-winning novel 100 Years of Solitude. In this pillar of magical realism, Marquez describes the presence of an American banana company in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo, which exploited and destroyed the town’s resources and people. The people responded with a general strike, culminating in the military executing an apocalyptic massacre against the strikers who had gathered in a train station. Garcia Marquez has explained that this scene was directly inspired by the Banana Massacre, which was prominent in his memory of Colombian history.²⁰

This atrocity continues to be a point of contention in Colombia, as, in 2017, right-wing Representative Maria Fernanda Cabal claimed that the massacre was a communist myth that was blown out of proportion in order to support communist operations.²¹ In this way, the rhetoric of a communist threat persists in modern-day discussions of the Banana Massacre.

Significance to the 1920s

Justifying such violence and anti-union activity required fear-mongering, with the most effective tool being the apparent threat of the spread of communism. The strike in Colombia did occur in alliance with the Colombian Communist Party, which helped mobilize the poor and small business owners to support the strikers and their demands.²² Prior to the massacre, from 1919 to 1920, the United States was the site of a Red Scare, the successful result of the Bolshevik Revolution in what became the Soviet Union. During the Red Scare, the American public feared that communism would create a revolution in the United States. Due to this, significant hysteria spread throughout the United States, with people like organized laborers under intense scrutiny.²³ For this reason, corporations that suppressed strikes were viewed as safeguards against communism.²⁴ This was not coincidental, as corporations, with the help of the press, made it seem as though all strikes were part of a larger communist plot.²⁵ Furthermore, companies like the United Fruit Company hired public relations firms to ensure that bloody stories like the Banana Massacre did not reach the American public.²⁶

The language of a communist threat also pervaded government correspondence regarding the massacre. According to a telegram sent from the American Vice Consul in Santa Marta Lawrence Cotie to the Secretary of State at the time, Frank Billings Kellogg, on December 9, 1928, the Colombian military was “actively engaged in clearing the district of the Communists.”²⁸ What is meant by “clearing” is not precisely clear, but one could conjecture that it is about detaining or even killing those suspected to be communist. In this way, it is clear that the apparent threat of communism was key to military operations in the Banana Zone.

The role of the Red Scare and censorship looked rather different on the Colombian side of this atrocity. The Colombian government also feared a communist revolution, resulting in the passage of Decree 707, which gave the police significant powers to repress those suspected to be communist in 1927. Similarly, in 1928, the government introduced and passed projects aimed at attacking suspected communists. However, this did very little to prevent the growth of the opposition to the conservative government. Thus the campaign against the “Red Menace” was largely unsuccessful and criticized by many domestically and internationally.²⁹ 

Despite the predominantly conservative regime that seemed to dominate Colombia’s politics in the 1920s, propaganda against them proliferated before and during the strike. For example, the Diario de Córdoba was best known for ridiculing army officers. Mahecha utilized his printing machine to have La Nacion and La Prensa publish pieces supporting the strike. This rhetoric spread to the opposition press in Bogota. The propaganda leaflets were read aloud to the largely illiterate crowds. The government was slightly more successful in censoring the press in the Banana Zone from the date of the massacre until the end of the state of siege on March 14, 1929. Outside of the Banana Zone, however, newspapers continued to criticize the actions of the government.³⁰

Citations 

Footnotes

1. “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See,” Visualizing the Americas, accessed March 31, 2025, https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1. ︎
2. Lindsey Morey, “Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire,” Roots of Contemporary Issues, 2014, https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/. ︎
3. Morey, “Blood For Bananas.” ︎
4. Kevin Coleman, “The Photos That We Don’t Get to See: Sovereignties, Archives, and the 1928 Massacre of Banana Workers in Colombia,” essay, in Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015), 104–34, https://kevincoleman.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Coleman_The-Photos-We-Dont-Get-to-See_Sovereignties-Archives-and-the-1928-Massacre-of-Banana-Workers-in-Colombia.pdf, 106. ︎
5. Coleman, “The Photos That We Don’t Get to See,” 108. ︎
6. “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎
7.  Coleman, “The Photos That We Don’t Get to See,” 110-111. ︎
8. Mariana Ramirez Cabal, “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power,” Harvard International Review, June 9, 2023, https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/. ︎
9.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 31-32. ︎
10.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 36. ︎
11. Ramirez Cabal, “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power.” ︎
12.  Coleman, “The Photos That We Don’t Get to See,” 109. ︎
13.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎
14. Aviva Chomsky, “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 901–115, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673094, 95. ︎
15.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎
16.  After the Military Opened Fire on the Striking Workers in Ciénaga, the Workers Destroyed Several of the UFC’s Buildings, Including the Engineers’ Quarters in Sevilla., Kevin Coleman (The United Fruit Company Photograph Collection, Harvard University, 1928), https://kevincoleman.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Coleman_The-Photos-We-Dont-Get-to-See_Sovereignties-Archives-and-the-1928-Massacre-of-Banana-Workers-in-Colombia.pdf. ︎
17. Eduardo Posada-Carbó, “Fiction as History: The Bananeras and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30, no. 2 (May 1998): 395–414, https://www.jstor.org/stable/158531, 404-405. ︎
18. Posada-Carbó, “Fiction as History,” 403 ︎
19. Adriaan Alsema, “One of Colombia’s Worst Massacres in History a Communist Myth: Opposition Senator,” Colombia News, November 30, 2017, https://colombiareports.com/amp/one-colombias-worst-massacres-history-communist-myth-opposition-senator/. ︎
20. Posada-Carbó, “Fiction as History,” 395-396. ︎
21. Alsema, “One of Colombia’s Worst Massacres in History a Communist Myth.” ︎
22.  Chomsky, “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone,” 95. ︎
23. Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 218. ︎
24. Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 32. ︎
25. Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 220. ︎
26. Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 31. ︎
27. Coleman, “The Photos We Don’t Get to See.” ︎
28.  Kevin Coleman, “The Photos We Don’t Get to See,” Kevin Coleman, June 23, 2021, https://kevincoleman.org/the-1928-massacre-of-banana-workers/. ︎
29. Posada-Carbó, “Fiction as History,” 403-404. ︎
30. Posada-Carbó, “Fiction as History,” 402-403. ︎

Bibliography

1916 Advertisement for the United Fruit Company Steamship Line, Wikimedia Commons (Scribner’s Magazine, February 1, 1916), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_Fruit_Ad_1916.jpg.

After the military opened fire on the striking workers in Ciénaga, the workers destroyed several of the UFC’s buildings, including the engineers’ quarters in Sevilla. Kevin Coleman. The United Fruit Company Photograph Collection, Harvard University, 1928. https://kevincoleman.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Coleman_The-Photos-We-Dont-Get-to-See_Sovereignties-Archives-and-the-1928-Massacre-of-Banana-Workers-in-Colombia.pdf. 

Alsema, Adriaan. “One of Colombia’s Worst Massacres in History a Communist Myth: Opposition Senator.” Colombia News, November 30, 2017. https://colombiareports.com/amp/one-colombias-worst-massacres-history-communist-myth-opposition-senator/. 

Chomsky, Aviva. “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 901–115. https://doi.org/www.jstor.org/stable/27673094. 

Coleman, Kevin. “The Photos That We Don’t Get to See: Sovereignties, Archives, and the 1928 Massacre of Banana Workers in Colombia.” Essay. In Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism, 104–34. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015. https://kevincoleman.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Coleman_The-Photos-We-Dont-Get-to-See_Sovereignties-Archives-and-the-1928-Massacre-of-Banana-Workers-in-Colombia.pdf. 

Coleman, Kevin. “The Photos We Don’t Get to See.” Kevin Coleman, June 23, 2021. https://kevincoleman.org/the-1928-massacre-of-banana-workers/. 

“Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” Visualizing the Americas. Accessed March 31, 2025. https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1. 

Comisaría de la United Fruit Company en Ciénaga, 1928. 1928. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comisariato_cienaga.jpg. 

Handling bananas, backing the bunch, Colombia, 1924. ReVista. Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, 1924. https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/making-a-difference-repatriating-photographs-revista/. 

Morey, Lindsey. “Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire.” Roots of Contemporary Issues, 2014. https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/. 

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. “Fiction as History: The Bananeras and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Journal of Latin American Studies 30, no. 2 (May 1998): 395–414. https://www.jstor.org/stable/158531. 

Ramirez Cabal, Mariana. “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power.” Harvard International Review, June 9, 2023. https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/. 

Unknown. Banana Massacre Photo. 1928. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banana_massacre_photo.png.

stefanieviera

Stefanie Viera is a 3rd year History and Humanities & Global Studies double major who is taking the Discovering Digital History course in the spring of 2025. She currently work at the Jane Addams Papers Project as an Editorial Assistant.

In 2007, David J. Goldberg, a white professor of history at Cleveland State University,  provided an overview of the evolving way in which historians have analyzed the 1920s in his historiographical work entitled “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives.” He highlights the manner in which there has been a shift from a focus on political history to a more holistic image of the divisions of American society during that decade.¹ 

A little over 10 years later, white Progressive Era historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Jennifer Fronc published “The 1920s – A Historiographical Survey” in 2018. Fronc takes an even more aggressive historiographical approach, as she criticizes previous historical analyses that viewed it as a distinct historical unit and focuses on the lavishness typically associated with those years. She then details the manner in which a more intersectional analysis of the 1920s, using the lenses of race, class, gender and sexuality, is necessary to properly understand the 1920s. Fronc supports Rebecca Edwards’ “long Progressive Era model” when discussing the new turn 1920s history is taking.² 

Comparing & Contrasting

The key similarity between Goldlberg’s and Fronc’s historiographical analysis of the 1920s is that they note a recent change in which historians are shifting from a surface-level perspective of the decade, whether it be politics or excessiveness, to a holistic consideration of how different social groups were impacted by and shaped events in the 1920s. Specifically, Goldberg demonstrates how historians have analyzed 1920s politics, business, prohibition, white supremacy, immigration, African-Americans, women, gay communities, and media.⁴ Similarly, Fronc focuses on the manner in which recent historians have supported a more diverse perspective on prohibition, women’s suffrage, African-American movements outside of the Harlem Renaissance, and immigration.⁵ 

Despite there only being a decade-long gap between the two articles’ publication, there are some notable differences. For example, Goldberg did not capture the importance of intersectionality, or the manner in which multiple identities intersect to create unique situations, in historical considerations of the 1920s. However this can be attributed to the fact that this only emerged as an analytical category in the 1990s. Goldberg further viewed the decade as a distinctive era, while Fronc preferred to view it as a part of an extended Progressive Era. Additionally, Fronc mainly discussed works published in the 1980s onward, while Goldberg’s historiographical examination included works that were published as early as the 1930s. This may be because she wished to go more in depth on recent scholarship that have not received as much historiographical attention.

Historiographical Changes

When comparing the types of sources referred to by Fronc and Goldberg in their historiographical examination of the 1920s, it becomes clear that different themes come in and out of focus in different decades. For example, with consideration to Goldberg’s sources, from the 1960s-1970s, most historians were focused on the politics of the 1920s. By the 1980s, historians seemed to take a particular interest in African-American history of the 1920s, and this swell occurred again in the 2000s. In between those two decades, historical analysis of women in the 1920s gained popularity in the 1990s. Fronc’s sources are a bit more limited due to the fewer thematic focuses and the fact that she did not use sources from before the 1980s, so it is a bit less representative of historiographical development. With that said, for all of Fronc’s sources from the 1980s-2010s, histories on African-Americans outnumbered all other themes, with the exception of the 2000s, when there was an equal number of sources on women and African-Americans. However, this is without considering the intersectionality of many of these historical works, as many used multiple different lenses. 

Due to the fact that both of these articles are more recent, the reader is able to see how more diverse historical research is pursued with regard to the 1920s, particularly in the 1980s and beyond. With that said, research on immigration is woefully underrepresented, despite the important developments that occurred in the 1920s for immigrant communities. This may be because immigration became a more important issue in society by 2017, making it so there are not as many historical analyses that focus on it. In the timeline of both Fronc’s and Goldberg’s historiographical surveys, immigration-focused works sparsely appear in historical pieces starting in the 1980s. One may anticipate an increase in immigration-focused historical works about the 1920s in the future, considering how pertinent that subject is today. 

Learning about how past history has been written is essential to understanding history now, as different subjects will be emphasized over others depending on new developments in the field and the importance of such history to contemporary events. In analyzing what has been studied, one can also better determine what areas need further development, and thus improve historical knowledge of that era. 

Bibliography

African American boy selling The Washington Daily News – sign on his hat reads, “Have you read The News? One cent” – headline reads “Millionaire tax rends G.O.P.” November 8, 1921. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_American_boy_selling_The_Washington_Daily_News.png. 

Cheney Johnston, Alfred. Muriel Finley (aka Murrel Finely). 1927. Wikimedia Commons . https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Muriel_Finley_(aka_Murrel_Finely)_-_1920s_-_by_Alfred_Cheney_Johnston.jpg. 

Fronc, Jennifer. “The 1920s–A Historiographical Survey.” Routledge History of the United States, 2018, 15–24. 

Goldberg, David J. “Rethinking the 1920S: Historians and Changing Perspectives.” OAH Magazine of History 21, no. 3 (2007): 7–10. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25162122. 

1.  David J. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives,” OAH Magazine of History 21, no. 3 (2007): 7–10, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25162122. ︎
2.  Jennifer Fronc, “The 1920s–A Historiographical Survey,” Routledge History of the United States, 2018, 15–24. ︎
3. Alfred Cheney Johnston, Muriel Finley (Aka Murrel Finely), 1927, Wikimedia Commons, 1927, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Muriel_Finley_(aka_Murrel_Finely)_-_1920s_-_by_Alfred_Cheney_Johnston.jpg. ︎
4.  Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s,” 7–10. ︎
5.  Fronc, “The 1920s,” 15–24. ︎
6.  African American Boy Selling The Washington Daily News – Sign on His Hat Reads, “Have You Read The News? One Cent” – Headline Reads “Millionaire Tax Rends G.O.P.,” November 8, 1921, Wikimedia Commons, November 8, 1921, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_American_boy_selling_The_Washington_Daily_News.png. ︎

stefanieviera

Stefanie Viera is a 3rd year History and Humanities & Global Studies double major who is taking the Discovering Digital History course in the spring of 2025. She currently work at the Jane Addams Papers Project as an Editorial Assistant.

The 1920s was an era known for its trends of excessive consumer culture. Although this is often exaggerated, there is still some truth to this assessment, as material goods gained increasing popularity during the decade. Such atypical purchases were also more affordable to the general public, and many were eager to purchase them.³ One such item that gained popularity amongst the 1920s consumer culture crowd was the banana, which was not part of the typical American diet until after the United Fruit Company (U.F.C.) vigorously advertised it. The company began advertising bananas in 1917, at which time they already had established plantations in Central and South American countries, and they used the typical “logic” form of advertising to sell the exotic fruit. For this reason, they had scientists promote the nutritional value of bananas, and banana sales began to increase. However, it would only truly reach its peak in the 1920s, when Edward Bernays changed American advertising forever as he targeted people’s emotions as opposed to using logic. One of the largest projects the U.F.C undertook with Bernays as advertising director was the launch of the “Great White Fleet” cruiser that brought Americans to tour United Fruit’s plantations in Latin America. This endeavor would prove to be very successful in increasing the banana market. However, the visitors only saw a theatrically created plantation that aimed to portray it as a humane and peaceful place. In reality, U.F.C. plantations were corrupt and the laborers were subjected to terrible work conditions.⁴

Colombia was home to a number of United Fruit plantations, where the banana workers were subjected to long hours and low pay. Laborers from the U.F.C.’s Magdalena plantation organized a strike on October 6, 1928, in which they issued nine demands to the company.⁵ Their demands included receiving real money payments and transitioning to a six-day work week.⁶ The strike lasted two months, and on December 5th, the Governor of Magdalena summoned the strikers to Ciénaga in order to settle the strike. Strikers gathered in the thousands and, at the same time, the government issued Decree Number 1 that ordered the military to open fire on the unarmed strikers and their families.⁷ It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 2,000 people were killed in Ciénaga’s train station that night.⁸ Despite this, once daybreak came around, only nine bodies were left behind. Some strikers theorized that the nine bodies were symbolic of the nine demands of the strikers. The Colombian military did not end there, with them killing over 1,000 strikers. Laborers responded by destroying a number of United Fruit’s buildings.⁹

This massacre was not the effort of just the Colombian government. In fact, the United Fruit Company leveraged their power in the United States government to ensure that the strike was brought to an end. Considering that the strikers’ demands would have resulted in higher operation costs for the company, U.F.C. utilized their ties with the United States government to have the Marine Corps threaten to invade Colombia if the Colombian government did not protect the company’s interests and bring an end to the strike.¹¹ Such corporate interference in international relations would not have been possible prior to World War I, when there was a greater amount of suspicion of corporate power. However, by the 1920s, corporations and businessmen were idealized, as the American public viewed them as instrumental parts of the war effort.¹² The American government in the 1920s therefore supported corporations like the United Fruit Company to expand their markets and acquire raw materials through applying economic, diplomatic and military pressure. This was particularly common in Latin America. The pressure could be subtle or indirect. However, in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Santo Domingo, the U.S. government took more direct and bold action to protect corporations’ interests by sending troops.¹³ The Banana Massacre was the direct result of American military threats and pressure against the Colombian government. 

Justifying such violence and anti-union activity required the use of fear-mongering, with the most effective tool being the apparent threat of the spread of communism. The strike in Colombia did in fact occur in alliance with the Colombian Communist Party, which helped mobilize the poor and small business owners to provide support for the strikers and their demands.¹⁴ Prior to the massacre, from 1919 to 1920 the United States was the site of a Red Scare, which was the successful result of the Bolshevik Revolution in what became the Soviet Union. During the Red Scare, the American public feared that communism would create a revolution in the United States. Due to this, significant hysteria spread throughout the United States, with people such as organized laborers falling under intense scrutiny.¹⁵ For this reason, corporations that suppressed strikes were viewed as safeguards against communism.¹⁶ This was not coincidental, as corporations, with the help of the press, made it seem as though all strikes were part of a larger communist plot.¹⁷ Furthermore, companies like the United fruit Company hired public relations firms to ensure that such bloody stories like that of the Banana Massacre did not reach the American public.¹⁸ Despite these efforts, the memory of the massacre has remained deeply ingrained in Colombian culture, with it even inspiring a scene of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Nobel Peace Prize winning book One Hundred Years of Solitude.¹⁹

Citations

Footnotes

1.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See,” Visualizing the Americas, accessed March 31, 2025, https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1. ︎
2.  Handling Bananas, Backing the Bunch, Colombia, 1924., ReVista (Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, 1924), https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/making-a-difference-repatriating-photographs-revista/. ︎
3.  Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, ed. Eric Foner (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995), 77. ︎
4.  Lindsey Morey, “Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire,” Roots of Contemporary Issues, 2014, https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/. ︎
5.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎
6.  Mariana Ramirez Cabal, “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power,” Harvard International Review, June 9, 2023, https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/. ︎
7.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎
8.  Aviva Chomsky, “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 901–115, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673094, 95. ︎
9.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎
10.  Comisaría de La United Fruit Company En Ciénaga, 1928., 1928, Wikimedia Commons, 1928, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comisariato_cienaga.jpg. ︎
11.  Ramirez Cabal, “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power.” ︎
12.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 31-32. ︎
13.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 36. ︎
14.  Chomsky, “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone,” 95. ︎
15.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 218. ︎
16.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 32. ︎
17.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 220. ︎
18.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 31. ︎
19.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ︎

Bibliography

Chomsky, Aviva. “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 901–115. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673094. 

“Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” Visualizing the Americas. Accessed March 31, 2025. https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1. 

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. Edited by Eric Foner. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995. 

Handling bananas, backing the bunch, Colombia, 1924. ReVista. Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, 1924. https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/making-a-difference-repatriating-photographs-revista/. 

Morey, Lindsey. “Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire.” Roots of Contemporary Issues, 2014. https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/. 

Ramirez Cabal, Mariana. “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power.” Harvard International Review, June 9, 2023. https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/.

stefanieviera

Stefanie Viera is a 3rd year History and Humanities & Global Studies double major who is taking the Discovering Digital History course in the spring of 2025. She currently work at the Jane Addams Papers Project as an Editorial Assistant.

When conceptualizing the decade known as the Roaring Twenties, people are inclined to imagine an era of excess and festivities. While this is often exaggerated, there is a kernel of truth to these imaginings. Indeed, the 1920s saw the creation of a new type of consumer culture that was reliant on a newfound commercialization of leisure. These new spending habits are reflected in how 300% more money was spent by Americans on leisure during this decade than previous ones. What exactly were Americans now spending their money on? While there were many industries that benefited from consumer culture, with one of the foremost examples being that of cars, commercial entertainment also saw an increase in patronage. For this reason, nightclubs and other such urban amusements prospered and thrived in the 1920s.² This, of course, contributed to the establishment and success of the Cotton Club during that decade. 

As leisure proliferated as a common pastime in the United States in the 1920s, Harlem became known as the “great playground,” known for its proliferation of amusing activities, with much of this being tied to its importance as a hub for jazz music and artists. The image of Harlem as “thrilling, bizarre [and] sensuous” that was cultivated during this era frequently brushing aside the more wretched aspects of Harlem’s cultural explosion. Despite being home to primarily African American cultural innovations, white subversion of African American communities was pervasive. In fact, the Cotton Club was one of a number of nightclubs in Harlem that only allowed for white patrons, while having predominantly African American performers. This occurred in conjunction with the phenomenon of “white slummers,” in which wealthier white individuals would take part in Harlem’s vibrant nightlife, doing dances like the Charleston and listening to jazz, both of which were originated by the African American community. It is thus no coincidence that there was a racial divide between the white audience and African American entertainers.⁴ In the problematically named Cotton Club, the existence of African American individuals and blackness became a performance, and created a socially acceptable platform for white patrons to reaffirm the subservience of African American performers. That is to say, the fact that the African American artists were performing and entertaining for white spectators ensured that racial inequalities were maintained in the leisure sphere.⁵ Even the advertising products distributed by the Cotton Club would reinforce these divisions by featuring caricatured African American performers alongside the more elegantly depicted white patrons.⁶ The Cotton Club was, therefore, a product of and proponent of the racism of the 1920s. 

Although wealthier classes were able to take part in many types of entertainment in a frequent manner, such leisure was not limited to them. In fact, the working classes not only took part in more thrifty forms of recreation but were also able to significantly influence the new forms of entertainment that were emerging. Many different ethnic classes were able to make significant contributions to 1920s leisure, and this includes African American communities. In particular, their dance and music trends, which includes jazz, would become an integral part of American mainstream culture in the decade and was appropriated by many white artists. In this way, these working-class African American communities were not just on the receiving end of 1920s cultural phenomena, but were also significant contributors. The jazz clubs, like the Cotton Club, that many congregated to were a direct result of African American cultural contributions. This entertainment industry would further reinforce the perceptions of ethnic identities, with the proliferation of “race” records, featuring African American styles of music like the blues and jazz, being a clear example of this.⁷ Another example can be seen in the famous film, The Jazz Singer, which featured the clear influences of African American and other immigrant communities on the culture of the 1920s.⁸ 

Consumer culture’s impact on the entertainment industry also had significant implications for the African American working class by creating new forms of labor. One is the ‘commercial model,’ which includes such models who took part in entertainment performances. Such a job, which had employed African-American individuals in the Cotton Club, was part of a new movement to commodify aesthetics and the creation of a particular ‘feel.’ At the Cotton Club, those working in this capacity were meant to model their African American identity as a particular cultural type for their all-white audiences.¹⁰ Those employed in this position at the Cotton Club, and other nightclubs, were mainly women of color. Such a ‘model showgirl’ would not have to truly perform through song or dance, but would pose on stage in costume.¹¹ This is deeply tied to the new emphasis on women’s sexuality in the 1920s, which would prove to be greatly problematic for African American women. African American women reformers found the sexualization of African American to be a form of dangerous exploitation. In fact, women writers in the Harlem Renaissance steered away from the emphasis on “primitivism” that their male counterparts took part in. This was because, when tied to sexuality, such a philosophy could contribute to undesirable stereotypes about African American women, which were at least in part shaped by white societal expectations.¹² The Cotton Club’s presentation of African American chorus line women as visual and sexual ‘objects’ contributed to these stereotypes. 

The Cotton Club was part of a larger national movement geared towards leisure as promoted by the new consumer culture. Art and joyous times were the image of nightlife in Harlem. However, institutions such as the Cotton Club were demonstrative of the greater problems that plagued Harlem and the rest of the United States. Despite being a platform for African American artists, their contributions to American culture were often diminished, and all-white nightclubs like the Cotton Club actually supported the negative stereotypes about African Americans.

1.  Maureen Maryanski, “The Aristocrat of Harlem: The Cotton Club,” The New York Historical, February 17, 2016, https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-aristocrat-of-harlem-the-cotton-club. ︎
2.  Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, ed. Eric Foner (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995), 77. ︎
3. The Famous Cotton Club Presents Dan Healy’s Cotton Club on Parade with Cab Calloway and His Famous Cotton Club Orchestra., JSTOR (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Photographs and Prints Division, 1925), https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31816453. ︎
4.  Gilbert Osofsky, “Symbols of the Jazz Age: The New Negro and Harlem Discovered,” American Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Summer 1965): 229–38, https://doi.org/10.2307/2711356, 235. ︎
5.  Malcolm Womack, “Harlem Holiday: The Cotton Club, 1925-1940,” University of Washington University Libraries (dissertation, 2013), http://hdl.handle.net/1773/23357, 102. ︎
6.  Womack, “Harlem Holiday,” 110-111. ︎
7.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 81-83. ︎
8.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 95. ︎
9. Maude Russel At The Cotton Club, Getty Images (Michael Ochs Archives, 1929). ︎
10.  Elspeth H. Brown, “The Commodification of Aesthetic Feeling: Race, Sexuality, and the 1920s Stage Model,” Feminist Studies 40, no. 1 (2014): 65–97, https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2014.0003, 65-68. ︎
11.  Brown, “The Commodification of Aesthetic Feeling,” 89. ︎
12.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 139. ︎

Bibliography

Brown, Elspeth H. “The Commodification of Aesthetic Feeling: Race, Sexuality, and the 1920s Stage Model.” Feminist Studies 40, no. 1 (2014): 65–97. https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2014.0003. 

The Famous Cotton Club presents Dan Healy’s Cotton Club on Parade with Cab Calloway and his famous Cotton Club Orchestra. JSTOR. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Photographs and Prints Division, 1925. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31816453. 

Maryanski, Maureen. “The Aristocrat of Harlem: The Cotton Club.” The New York Historical, February 17, 2016. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-aristocrat-of-harlem-the-cotton-club. 

Maude Russel At The Cotton Club. Getty Images. Michael Ochs Archives, 1929. 

Osofsky, Gilbert. “Symbols of the Jazz Age: The New Negro and Harlem Discovered.” American Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Summer 1965): 229–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/2711356. 

Womack, Malcolm. “Harlem Holiday: The Cotton Club, 1925-1940.” University of Washington University Libraries, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/23357. 

stefanieviera

Stefanie Viera is a 3rd year History and Humanities & Global Studies double major who is taking the Discovering Digital History course in the spring of 2025. She currently work at the Jane Addams Papers Project as an Editorial Assistant.

The Cotton Club was the most popular nightclub in Harlem during the 1920s, emerging at the height of the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance. Established in September 1923 by white American gangster Owen Madden after being released from jail, the Cotton Club remained a staple of Harlem’s nightlife until it changed locations in 1936.¹ Madden saw the club primarily as a place to distribute bootleg beer, but it held far more cultural significance than he could have anticipated. While it remained in Harlem, the Cotton Club  proved to be the most significant venue for jazz during the Harlem Renaissance, hosting iconic musicians like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Ethel Waters, and providing the stage by which artists could innovate, achieve fame and continue redefining the genre.² 

Opening of the Cotton Club

It all began with heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who opened a supper club named Club Deluxe on 142 Street and Lenox Avenue in 1920. After only a few years of being open, Johnson handed over operations to famous white gangster Owen “Owney” Madden in 1923, although Johnson remained the manager of the club.⁴ Madden designed and ran the club from his jail cell in Sing Sing, where he was held for manslaughter, eventually transforming Club Deluxe into the Cotton Club. The Cotton Club quickly became an exclusive and popular jazz venue.⁵ Madden used the Club to sell his “#1 Beer” at the time of prohibition, and the Cotton Club’s illicit alcohol activities resulted in a brief closure in 1925. The Club soon reopened and continued to sell alcohol without interference from the police or other authorities.⁶ This is believed to be because of the political connections that the Club’s leadership possessed.⁷

Madden executed a particular vision for the Club centered around elegance and class, with waiters dressed in red tuxedos meant to emulate the typical look of butlers. The menu included such expensive and exotice dishes as Venison Steak and Chop Suey, which would be served to the patrons sitting in one of the two tiers of tables, organized in the shape of a horseshoe. Opening at 9:00PM and closing at 3:00AM, the Cotton Club was the premier place for the elite to take part in Harlem’s booming nightlife. However, Madden’s vision of class also involved segregation, as only white individuals were allowed to enter the Club. At the same time, he wanted talented African American jazz artists to supply the entertainment. The bandstand was located in front of a painted background of weeping willows and slave quarters, with tall white pillars on the stage to make it appear as if the African American artists were performing on the veranda of a plantation mansion.⁸ Despite the clearly racist undertones of the Club, many black artists took advantage of the platform offered them at the Cotton Club, achieving fame along the way.  

Duke Ellington and Other Legendary Performers

Duke Ellington is undoubtedly the most important musician to have received his start in the Cotton Club, where he had a residency from 1927 to 1931.⁹ Before bringing his talent to the Cotton Club, Ellington began his career in Washington, D.C., which had been the hub for “American Negro civilization” until around the 1920s. The band he formed in D.C., the Washingtonians, moved to Harlem and, by the mid 1920s, the band’s jazz performances made it so they were already gaining local popularity. Upon becoming the Cotton Club’s primary band, Ellington’s 10-piece ensemble became an integral part of the Club’s success, and vice versa, as they gained popularity for their ability to sound like an “African Jungle.” Amongst the antebellum plantation decor of the Cotton Club, Ellington’s band performed songs such as “Jungle Nights in Harlem,” where famous trumpet players like Cootie Williams and Bubber Miley mimicked growling and other animal sounds with their instruments. Ellington struggled to come to terms with his accommodation of harmful stereotypes of African-Americans for many years, but he was able to take advantage of the “jungle” sound to experiment with dissonant harmonies and “speaking” brass. Furthermore, his popularity allowed him to perform at venues that welcomed black audiences in the 1930s, like the Savoy Ballroom and Apollo Theater.¹⁰ 

The radio exposure afforded to Duke Ellington and his ensemble supported the popularity of Duke Ellington, and jazz as a whole. In the 1920s, the radio was a modern marvel, particularly amongst teenagers after World War I. It was through this medium that nightly Cotton Club broadcasts of Ellington’s “jungle music” reached the ears of many listeners all across the United States.¹¹ This provided significant exposure for Ellington and jazz music on a national level, as well as increased popularity of the Club itself.¹² He used his growing platform to advocate for the significance of black music, writing in the British magazine Rhythm that “The music of my race is something more than the American idiom. It is the result of our transplantation to American soil, and was our reaction in the plantation days to the tyranny we endured. What we could not say openly, we expressed in music.¹³” In this way, Ellington countered the commodification of jazz music and brought to light its connections with black resistance to oppression.

Duke Ellington was not the only musician to perform at the Cotton Club. Indeed, throughout its time based in Harlem, the Cotton Club attracted the skills of many different talented jazz musicians. One such example is Johnny Hodges, a saxophonist who performed in Ellington’s ensemble during the 1920s. An influx of soloists into his band in 1929, such as Cootie Williams and Juan Tizol, showcased their improvisation skills in the Club’s musical scene. This was particularly important, as solos were and continue to be a staple of the genre. After the 1920s, Cab Calloway replaced Ellington as band leader, and he became famous for his scat-jive vocals, bringing a new element to the music of the Club.¹⁴ The Jimmie Lunceford Band also performed at the Cotton Club.¹⁵

Despite the many groundbreaking black musicians that performed and gained fame through performing at the Cotton Club, they were not actually able to enjoy the music as an audience member. Indeed, the Cotton Club only permitted white patrons to enter. This made the Club a great moral contradiction for black artists who played their uniquely African-American music at the Club.

The Cotton Club as Segregated Leisure

As leisure proliferated as a common pastime in the United States in the 1920s, Harlem became known as the “great playground,” known for its proliferation of amusing activities, with much of this being tied to its importance as a hub for jazz music and artists. The image of Harlem as “thrilling, bizarre [and] sensuous” that was cultivated during this era frequently brushing aside the more wretched aspects of Harlem’s cultural explosion. Despite being home to primarily African American cultural innovations, white subversion of African American communities was pervasive. In fact, the Cotton Club was one of a number of nightclubs in Harlem that only allowed for white patrons, while having predominantly African American performers. This occurred in conjunction with the phenomenon of “white slummers,” in which wealthier white individuals took part in Harlem’s vibrant nightlife, doing dances like the Charleston and listening to jazz, both of which were originated by the African American community. It is thus no coincidence that there was a racial divide between the white audience and African American entertainers.¹⁷ In the problematically named Cotton Club, the existence of African American individuals and blackness became a performance, and created a socially acceptable platform for white patrons to reaffirm the subservience of African American performers. That is to say, the fact that the African American artists were performing and entertaining for white spectators ensured that racial inequalities were maintained in the leisure sphere.¹⁸ Even the advertising products distributed by the Cotton Club reinforced these divisions by featuring caricatured African American performers alongside the more elegantly depicted white patrons.¹⁹ The Cotton Club was, therefore, a product of and proponent of the racism of the 1920s. 

Despite this, many did not accept this segregation without putting up a fight. In fact, The Afro-American, a Baltimore-based newspaper, reported on July 16, 1927, that a Mrs. Geraldine Dismond sued the Cotton Club for denying her and James G. Cotter entrance into the Cotton Club. Dismond and Cotter were elites, she was the wife of a “prominent local physician” and he was an assistant district U.S. Attorney. The act of suing the club itself was defiant as they rejected the tradition of segregation. The authors of this news clipping also took part in resisting the racist policies of the Cotton Club, as they clearly wished to emphasize the hypocrisy of the Cotton Club having “race bands” for all white audiences. The title of the clipping is particularly biting, as the club is referred to as a “Jim Crow Cabaret,” drawing attention to how, although northern states like New York did not have official segregation policies like the South, segregation was still customary. 

The Sexualization of Women and Colorism in the Cotton Club

With the new approach to entertainment that came with the 1920’s new consumer culture also came significant implications for the African American women by creating new forms of labor. One is the ‘commercial model,’ which includes such models who took part in entertainment performances. Such a job, which had employed African-American individuals in the Cotton Club, was part of a new movement to commodify aesthetics and the creation of a particular ‘feel.’ At the Cotton Club, those working in this capacity were meant to model their African American identity as a particular cultural type for their all-white audiences.²¹ The costumes presented both racial and sexual stereotypes, using “exotic” designs that presented the women in an exposing manner. 

Those employed in this position at the Cotton Club, and other nightclubs, were mainly women of color. Such a ‘model showgirl’ did not have to truly perform through song or dance, but would pose on stage in costume.²³ This is deeply tied to the new emphasis on women’s sexuality in the 1920s, which proved to be greatly problematic for African American women. African American women reformers found the sexualization of African American to be a form of dangerous exploitation. In fact, women writers in the Harlem Renaissance steered away from the emphasis on “primitivism” that their male counterparts took part in. This was because, when tied to sexuality, such a philosophy could contribute to undesirable stereotypes about African American women, which were at least in part shaped by white societal expectations.²⁴ The Cotton Club’s presentation of African American chorus line women as visual and sexual ‘objects’ contributed to these stereotypes.

Being viewed and used as primarily “sexual objects,” the black women that performed for elite white New Yorkers in the Cotton Club were measured up to strict physical standards that demonstrate the intersectionality of gender and race during the 1920s. The Cotton Club Girls, otherwise known as the Copper Colored Gals, had to be at least 5 feet and 6 inches tall, under 21 years of age, and pass what was known as the “paper bag” tests. According to this test, the performer had to be lighter than a brown paper bag. This test was not unique to the Cotton Club at all; it was used to determine the acceptance of black individuals, inside and outside their community, to elite institutions such as fraternities, universities, and even churches.²⁶ The practice is typically associated with institutions based in the southern city of New Orleans, but its use in the Cotton Club demonstrates that such colorist practices pervaded northern communities as well.²⁷ Complexion tests were quite popular in the United States, as white people attempted to prevent fair-skinned black individuals from entering what they deemed to be their spaces. Tests included looking at the nails and hair roots of people to determine if they were black. From the 1920s-1940s, “spotting” was a particularly popular form of ensuring that African-Americans were excluded from entering white-only institutions by having a black individual stand at the entrance and “spot” any white-passing African-Americans, subsequently preventing them from entering.²⁸ 

The Legacy of the Cotton Club

The Cotton Club was the premier jazz venue for black musicians, and a hotspot for wealthy white elite to enjoy top jazz performances during the Roaring Twenties. The Cotton Club called itself “the Aristocrat of Harlem,” and this proved to be true through its economic and racial exclusivity. While the Cotton Club’s legacy continues to be remembered as a launching pad for the career of many jazz artists through stage and radio exposure, the legacy of the Cotton Club is also marred by its history as a racist and segregated institution that exploited black art and artists for white enjoyment. This is particularly evident in how the aesthetics and name of the Club were reminiscent of the slave south, and the hypocritical policy that allowed for black performers but hardly any black patrons.²⁹ The Cotton Club in Harlem closed in 1936 after the Harlem Race Riot of 1935, as it was no longer considered to be a safe place for whites.³⁰ Soon after, they opened a new location in Midtown. Interestingly, the new, and short-lived, Cotton Club was open to black audience members, in a (failed) last-ditch attempt to obscure its problematic racial history.³¹ 

Significance to the 1920s

The Great Migration started in the 1870s within the context of social and economic frustrations that plagued many African-American communities in the South. Due to this, many moved to the North and West to receive respite. Motivation to migrate increased exponentially after World War I, as more African-Americans were drawn to the factory jobs in the cities. In the 1920s, 750,000 African Americans fled the conditions of the South, mainly relocating in cities.³³ 

Throughout the Great Migration, which ended during the Great Depression, 2 million African Americans moved out of the South to northern cities like New York City, which was particularly popular. The North was particularly attractive as an apparent refuge from racial violence where they could have more opportunities to work and vote without being threatened. Despite the apparent improved standard of living through better wages for menial jobs, the benefits were offset by the high cost of living and racial discrimination continued as African-Americans were subject to redlining and forced to live in slums. At the same time that this mass exodus was occuring, Harlem was experiencing an explosion of new cultural expression known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Great Migration actually supported the Harlem Renaissance, as the black population in New York City doubled during the 1920s. With this stream of black emigrants also came a number of artists that became key to this cultural phenomenon. For this reason, Harlem became the site of “New Negro” art and politics, with pride in black culture being the center of this cultural boom.³⁴ 

Jazz became the defining music and soundtrack of the Harlem Renaissance and “New Negro” movement. ³⁵The African-American population often viewed music as a symbolic release from the physical and economic bondage that they were subjected to by white slave-owners in recent history. Now able to obtain instruments, the African-American community was given the opportunity to experiment with a far broader range of musical styles. The result was jazz, which combined the fluid syncopation techniques customarily used in West African music with European ragtime piano.³⁶ 

It was in the context of the emergence of many skilled artists from the South through the Great Migration and the creation of Jazz as part of the Harlem Renaissance that the Cotton Club was established. The club soon became extremely popular and provided the platform for many legendary jazz musicians that continue to define the genre. 

Citations

Footnotes

1.  Maureen Maryanski, “The Aristocrat of Harlem: The Cotton Club,” The New York Historical, February 17, 2016, https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-aristocrat-of-harlem-the-cotton-club. ︎
2. Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 149. ︎
3. Cotton Club 1930, Wikimedia Commons (The New Movie Magazine, 1930), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_Club_1930.jpg. ︎
4. “The Cotton Club (NYC) Opens,” African American Registry, December 4, 2024, https://aaregistry.org/story/the-cotton-club-opens/. ︎
5. Margaret Moos Pick, “A Night at the Cotton Club: Music of Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen & Cab Calloway,” Riverwalk Jazz, 1997, https://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/program/night-cotton-club-music-duke-ellington-harold-arlen-cab-calloway. ︎
6.  “The Cotton Club (NYC) Opens.” ︎
7.  Elizabeth Winter, “Cotton Club of Harlem (1923- ),” BlackPast, December 17, 2007, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/cotton-club-harlem-1923/. ︎
8.  Moos Pick, “A Night at the Cotton Club.” ︎
9.  Aaron J. Johnson, “A Date With The Duke: Ellington on Radio,” The Musical Quarterly 96, no. 3–4 (November 19, 2013): 369–405, https://doi.org/10.1093/musqtl/gdt014, 375. ︎
10.  Daniel Matlin, “‘Something Part, Yet an Integral Part’: Duke Ellington’s Harlem and the Nexus of Race and Nation,” Cambridge University Press, February 8, 2021, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/article/something-apart-yet-an-integral-part-duke-ellingtons-harlem-and-the-nexus-of-race-and-nation/46B58AEB337443073C1A7D3102E259A1. ︎
11.  Johnson, “A Date With The Duke,” 369-370. ︎
12.  Johnson, “A Date With The Duke,” 380. ︎
13.  Laura Townsend, “How Duke Ellington Used His Appearance to Subvert Racist Stereotypes, and Other Ways He Fought Racism,” PBS, July 12, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/how-duke-ellington-used-his-appearance-to-subvert-racist-stereotypes-and-other-ways-he-fought-racism/17385/. ︎
14.  Gioia, The History of Jazz, 150-154. ︎
15.  Gioia, The History of Jazz, 156. ︎
16.  The Famous Cotton Club Presents Dan Healy’s Cotton Club on Parade with Cab Calloway and His Famous Cotton Club Orchestra., JSTOR (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Photographs and Prints Division, 1925), https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31816453. ︎
17.  Gilbert Osofsky, “Symbols of the Jazz Age: The New Negro and Harlem Discovered,” American Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Summer 1965): 229–38, https://doi.org/10.2307/2711356, 235. ︎
18.  Malcolm Womack, “Harlem Holiday: The Cotton Club, 1925-1940,” University of Washington University Libraries (dissertation, 2013), http://hdl.handle.net/1773/23357, 102. ︎
19.  Womack, “Harlem Holiday,” 110-111. ︎
20.  “Sues Harlem Jim Crow Cabaret,” The Afro-American, July 16, 1927, https://www.newspapers.com/image/1134157240/?match=1&terms=%22Louis%20Armstrong%22%20%22cotton%20club%22. ︎
21.  Elspeth H. Brown, “The Commodification of Aesthetic Feeling: Race, Sexuality, and the 1920s Stage Model,” Feminist Studies 40, no. 1 (2014): 65–97, https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2014.0003, 65-68. ︎
22.  Maude Russel At The Cotton Club, Getty Images (Michael Ochs Archives, 1929). ︎
23.  Brown, “The Commodification of Aesthetic Feeling,” 89. ︎
24.  Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, ed. Eric Foner (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995), 139. ︎
25. Fan from the Cotton Club., Curationist (National Museum of African American History and Culture, 1923), https://www.curationist.org/works/work-smith-nmaahc_2013.223.40. ︎
26.  “Colorism During the New Negro Movement: Cotton Club,” CUNY Academic Commons, 2025, https://colorism.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cotton-club/. ︎
27. Audrey Elisa Kerr, “The Paper Bag Principle: Of the Myth and the Motion of Colorism,” Journal of American Folklore118, no. 469 (June 2005): 271–89, https://doi.org/10.1353/jaf.2005.0031, 283. ︎
28. Audrey Elisa Kerr, “The Paper Bag Principle: Of the Myth and the Motion of Colorism,” Journal of American Folklore118, no. 469 (June 2005): 271–89, https://doi.org/10.1353/jaf.2005.0031, 277-279. ︎
29. Maureen Maryanski, “The Aristocrat of Harlem: The Cotton Club,” The New York Historical, February 17, 2016, https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-aristocrat-of-harlem-the-cotton-club. ︎
30.  Meher Tatna, “The Cotton Club,” Golden Globes, February 16, 2023, https://goldenglobes.com/articles/cotton-club/. ︎
31. Colony Little, “A Tale of Two Harlems: The Legacy of Jazz and Racism at the Cotton Club,” Curationist, July 2022, https://www.curationist.org/editorial-features/article/a-tale-of-two-harlems:-the-legacy-of-jazz-and-racism-at-the-cotton-club. ︎
32. The Scott Arthur Family ca. 1920, 1920, Wikimedia Commons, 1920, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scott_Arthur_Family_1920.jpg. ︎
33.  “Moving North, Heading West: African Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History,” The Library of Congress, accessed March 19, 2025, https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/african/moving-north-heading-west/. ︎
34.  “The Great Migration and The Harlem Renaissance,” Press Books, accessed March 19, 2025, https://open.baypath.edu/his115/chapter/the-great-migration-and-the-harlem-renaissance/. ︎
35.  Rachel Farebrother and Miriam Thaggert, A History of the Harlem Renaissance (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 345. ︎
36.  Farebrother and Thaggert, A History of the Harlem Renaissance, 351. ︎

Bibliography

Brown, Elspeth H. “The Commodification of Aesthetic Feeling: Race, Sexuality, and the 1920s Stage Model.” Feminist Studies 40, no. 1 (2014): 65–97. https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2014.0003. 

“Colorism During the New Negro Movement: Cotton Club.” CUNY Academic Commons, 2025. https://colorism.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cotton-club/. 

“The Cotton Club (NYC) Opens.” African American Registry, December 4, 2024. https://aaregistry.org/story/the-cotton-club-opens/. 

Cotton Club 1930. Wikimedia Commons. The New Movie Magazine, 1930. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_Club_1930.jpg. 

Dumenil, Lynn. The modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. Edited by Eric Foner. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995. 

Fan from the Cotton Club. Curationist. National Museum of African American History and Culture, 1923. https://www.curationist.org/works/work-smith-nmaahc_2013.223.40. 

Farebrother, Rachel, and Miriam Thaggert. A History of the Harlem Renaissance. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 

The Famous Cotton Club presents Dan Healy’s Cotton Club on Parade with Cab Calloway and his famous Cotton Club Orchestra. JSTOR. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Photographs and Prints Division, 1925. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31816453. 

Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021. 

“The Great Migration and The Harlem Renaissance.” Press Books. Accessed March 19, 2025. https://open.baypath.edu/his115/chapter/the-great-migration-and-the-harlem-renaissance/. 

Johnson, Aaron J. “A Date With The Duke: Ellington on Radio.” The Musical Quarterly 96, no. 3–4 (November 19, 2013): 369–405. https://doi.org/10.1093/musqtl/gdt014. 

Kerr, Audrey Elisa. “The Paper Bag Principle: Of the Myth and the Motion of Colorism.” Journal of American Folklore118, no. 469 (June 2005): 271–89. https://doi.org/10.1353/jaf.2005.0031. 

Little, Colony. “A Tale of Two Harlems: The Legacy of Jazz and Racism at the Cotton Club.” Curationist, July 2022. https://www.curationist.org/editorial-features/article/a-tale-of-two-harlems:-the-legacy-of-jazz-and-racism-at-the-cotton-club. 

Matlin, Daniel. “‘Something Part, Yet an Integral Part’: Duke Ellington’s Harlem and the Nexus of Race and Nation.” Cambridge University Press, February 8, 2021. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/article/something-apart-yet-an-integral-part-duke-ellingtons-harlem-and-the-nexus-of-race-and-nation/46B58AEB337443073C1A7D3102E259A1. 

Maryanski, Maureen. “The Aristocrat of Harlem: The Cotton Club.” The New York Historical, February 17, 2016. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-aristocrat-of-harlem-the-cotton-club. 

Maude Russel At The Cotton Club. Getty Images. Michael Ochs Archives, 1929. 

Moos Pick, Margaret. “A Night at the Cotton Club: Music of Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen & Cab Calloway.” Riverwalk Jazz, 1997. https://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/program/night-cotton-club-music-duke-ellington-harold-arlen-cab-calloway. 

“Moving North, Heading West: African Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History.” The Library of Congress. Accessed March 19, 2025. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/african/moving-north-heading-west/. 

Osofsky, Gilbert. “Symbols of the Jazz Age: The New Negro and Harlem Discovered.” American Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Summer 1965): 229–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/2711356. 

The Scott Arthur Family ca. 1920. 1920. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scott_Arthur_Family_1920.jpg. 

“Sues Harlem Jim Crow Cabaret.” The Afro-American. July 16, 1927. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1134157240/?match=1&terms=%22Louis%20Armstrong%22%20%22cotton%20club%22. 

Tatna, Meher. “The Cotton Club.” Golden Globes, February 16, 2023. https://goldenglobes.com/articles/cotton-club/. 

Townsend, Laura. “How Duke Ellington Used His Appearance to Subvert Racist Stereotypes, and Other Ways He Fought Racism.” PBS, July 12, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/how-duke-ellington-used-his-appearance-to-subvert-racist-stereotypes-and-other-ways-he-fought-racism/17385/.

Womack, Malcolm. “Harlem Holiday: The Cotton Club, 1925-1940.” University of Washington University Libraries, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/23357. 

Winter, Elizabeth. “Cotton Club of Harlem (1923- ).” BlackPast, December 17, 2007. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/cotton-club-harlem-1923/.

stefanieviera

Stefanie Viera is a 3rd year History and Humanities & Global Studies double major who is taking the Discovering Digital History course in the spring of 2025. She currently work at the Jane Addams Papers Project as an Editorial Assistant.

Significant events occurred in the 1920s; this includes the creation of prominent organizations, like the League of Nations, the women’s suffrage movement, and peacemaking efforts. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom was one such organization that rose to prominence during this decade, although it had been established before the 1920s. This awareness is tied to my work with the Jane Addams Papers Project. Outside of this, I look at the 1920s as an era in between important world events. It is before the Great Depression, which is of course tied to the presence of Wall Street during the 1920s. Furthermore, it takes place after the industrial revolution and after an important era of the labor movement, which thus means that this decade saw the results of these movements in labor. Perhaps most importantly, the 1920s was part of the interwar period, as it was after World War I and before World War II. This is of course indicative of the post-WWI turmoil that plagued the world, in particular the losing parties in Europe, after the peace treaty. 

1. Louis Armstrong Playing the Trumpet, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum (Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, July 12, 2022), https://www.theherbert.org/news/259/grown-up-in-the-1920s-music.

Upon searching for images of the 1920s, I stumbled upon one of the iconic trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong. I was, of course, aware of his presence before seeing this image, but I had not known that his music came into popularity during the 1920s. With consideration to the fame and legacy of Armstrong, I can infer from this image that the 1920s was an important era for jazz as a genre. With that said, most images I saw that included people of color were limited to performers like Armstrong. This is indicative of the discrimination that people of color were subjected to during the 1920s.

2. Frank Scherschel, Revelers Celebrating the End of Prohibition, Wisconsin Historical Society (Wisconsin Historical Society), accessed January 27, 2025, https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM9426.

This second image demonstrates one of the many reactions the American public had to prohibition, a policy that had slipped my mind upon my first consideration of the events of the 1920s. Although there were individuals who supported prohibition, like Jane Addams, this image makes it clear that there were many who were in complete defiance of this law. The tongue-in-cheek manner in which this image is posed demonstrates the humor with which many interacted with the 18th amendment.

3. An American Advertisement for Cars, Public Broadcasting Service (Public Broadcasting Service), accessed January 27, 2025, https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ush22-soc-1920sadvert/american-advertisements-in-the-1920s-interactive-image/.

The final image I located when searching through pictures of the 1920s appears to be an advertisement for cars. This makes it clear that by the 1920s, cars became a popular mode of privately owned transportation. This may also be indicative of the increased affordability of cars. The rhetoric of this advertisement further demonstrates the consumer culture that was likely prominent during this decade. 

These images tell a fascinating story of the musical, political, and technological changes that the 1920s saw, but there is much left to be said about the era. I look forward to discovering more about this decade during this semester!

Bibliography

An American Advertisement for Cars. Public Broadcasting Service. Public Broadcasting Service. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ush22-soc-1920sadvert/american-advertisements-in-the-1920s-interactive-image/. 

Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet. Herbert Art Gallery & Museum. Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, July 12, 2022. https://www.theherbert.org/news/259/grown-up-in-the-1920s-music. 

Scherschel, Frank. Revelers Celebrating the End of Prohibition. Wisconsin Historical Society. Wisconsin Historical Society. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM9426. 

stefanieviera

Stefanie Viera is a 3rd year History and Humanities & Global Studies double major who is taking the Discovering Digital History course in the spring of 2025. She currently work at the Jane Addams Papers Project as an Editorial Assistant.