When looking at pictures of the 1920s, I see people in these flashy outfits partying. That’s about it. I see men in suits and ties, however they wear a polo over their button ups and ties for a different style. Not too different from typical menswear from prior years, but the womenswear is what really changed. When they’re not wearing a hat, women have their hair shown short and somewhat curly, and the dresses they wear expose their backs a little bit, showing just how much more confident they are in their appearances. Hell, they appear really happy in these pictures too, so they really took the look and owned it. They wore shorter heels with their legs showing as well. Typically, it was a little under knee high, but in some dresses you’d be able to see their thighs a little if their skirt was shorter.

The way they dressed wasn’t the only thing that showed up in these pictures. The 1920s made sure to capture just how important the automobile was when it was being manufactured. Because of industrialization, cars were being created way more often and were being made to be affordable so more people could get them and would get them. Because of this, the streets in the pictures seem to be flooded with cars, and I even saw a picture of a little strip with a family saying “everyone owns a car but us”, trying to add fuel to the fire with how important the automobile was for this era. 

I saw pictures of jazz bands especially. Many men and women danced around the band members playing on their brass instruments, and I especially saw a picture of Louis Armstrong, who was a very important figure in jazz. Very talented trumpet player and vocalist, and he left a very important mark for African American musicians during this era and after. Seeing all of these pictures, I’m not very surprised by what I saw. The 1920s were mostly known for its industrialization, “jazz, cabarets, liquor”, and mighty stock crash. It was a very fun time period, but sadly all great things gotta come to an end for the next big thing.

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.

Racism in the United States during the 1920s was terrible towards African Americans due to this they were being killed in mass numbers. In the 1920s times were rough for any ethnicity or race other than white because the white supremacist leaders would perform public lynching and public massacres towards any black person or Mexicans who did anything out of line such as whistling to a white lady or using the same bathroom as a white man or even if they spoke back to a white man. Over 400 African Americans were lynched in 1920 alone. In addition, Racial segregation was enforced through restrictive covenants and deed restrictions. The U.S. government conducted unconstitutional raids and deportations against Mexican immigrants. Moreover, African Americans faced barriers to voting, including practices meant to prevent them from registering to vote.

During the 1920s it was also the great era of Mobsters. A  mobster is a bad guy who’s involved in organized crime. There are many great movies about mobsters that take place in the 1920s. The movie would be about a group of immigrants group from all over Europe trying to make a living by trafficking drugs, guns, alcohol, and killing people. Mobsters can be also explained as a group of people that are like a family but they have their leader who they follow. The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the Roaring Twenties ended. During the Great Depression Americans suffered a lot because there was a lot of loss of employment, jobs, houses, and even food. That time was rough for the American people due to a lot of starvation, people living in the streets, and because the American dollar was at its lowest point ever. Additionally, the Great Depression ended when War World 2 started due to a lot of jobs opening in the war industry.  Furthermore, Life has changed drastically 100 years later into the future now in 2025 things are so different yet the same with all these modern-day problems.

The website Roots of Jazz is a page created by PBS that dives into the history of jazz music in the United States. The majority of the content from the website comes from a Ken Burns documentary that was broadcasted on PBS. The documentary series consists of 10 episodes over an hour long each that dives into different aspects of jazz music, artists and culture. In an “About” tag, PBS talks with the filmmakers about the context of the series, while another tab delves deeper into Burns own past as a historical filmmaker and his process when approaching the topic. In the tab “Music 101” there is a blog written by a jazz composer in which he explores the music itself at a more fundamental level in order to paint the larger picture of how revolutionary jazz was during the 1920s. 

Each tab breaks down more detailed aspects of jazz music and the jazz age. In the “Music 101” section there are even boxes to click on which give information about jazz music for those unfamiliar with melody, rhythm, harmony and the various instruments used. In the tab “Roots of Jazz,” there is an interactive digital map which highlights some prominent locations in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York City. Content throughout the map is cited as being from “The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz” published by Oxford University Press. The map includes both locations and people, and includes a lengthy description of how the spot on the map is essential to the jazz age. The map gives you the option to go in chronological order to truly trace how jazz originated in the South and over time grew and traveled up North where it exploded in Harlem during the 1920s. 

The tab “Classroom” brings users to a new page that is geared specifically to educators. The page includes videos and activities that relate to jazz and the 1920s. The majority of the primary sources available are shown in the episodes of the documentary released by PBS. Primary documents are also available in the map feature as each location comes with components such as a photograph, direct quote or address to research further. At the bottom of the site there is a tab to explore related films to learn more about specific aspects of the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance or influential movements of the 20th century.

The website is trustworthy due to its affiliation with PBS and a renowned documentary filmmaker. However, there are few actual citations that point towards scholarly research on the blog. For those who have the time to go through each episode and use the features to accompany them it might be more useful, but without actually watching the films it is unclear where some information is coming from. 

Overall, Roots of Jazz functions as an easy to navigate website with a few dynamic features that make it more interesting. The website can be used as a solid starting point for anyone researching topics related to the 1920s, the jazz age or the Harlem Renaissance. The map feature offers great insight into specific people and places that can aid in research and generate ideas about the cultural influences of jazz, while the music information page offers research potential for those looking to uncover more about the technology of the music itself. The website might not offer a perfectly sound list of sources or provide a primary source archive of sorts, but the content that is available is enough to generate curiosity and propel researchers down new and more developed paths.

Lauren S

Senior History and American Studies student at Ramapo College of New Jersey enrolled in Discovering Digital History course taught by Dr. Hajo during Spring 2021.

What do I know and remember learning about the 1920s? The first idea that comes to mind when I think of the 1920s is the “Great Gatsby Era.” The 1920s was a decade of enormous glamorous parties run by the wealthiest people in America at the time.  The term “Roaring Twenties” was created because of how pivotal and action-packed this era was. Pivotal movements such as the Women’s right to vote was founded in this era.  I have learned about the 1920s in other classes, such as high school. I have also read books such as The Great Gatsby, which takes place in the 1920s. When I read The Great Gatsby in high school, I remember learning about the history of the time as an introduction to the book. I remember that women would wear flappers and short dresses to these parties, and men would be in suits wearing ties at these formal house parties. The book The Great Gatsby doesn’t delve into the historical aspects of the time but instead focuses on the book’s two main characters’ love life. The 1920s were when the culture was made up of new dressing, dancing, and parties. I have also learned about the Jazz Era in a music class that I took, which this era discussed. A renowned Jazz artist, Louis Armstong, also comes from this time. At this time, the population took in this new type of music as a sign to go out to party and enjoy this new type of music that had been born.

After looking at images 

As I googled the term “1920s” and looked at the image search, I noticed that I remembered the same dress from recalling the 1920s. Wikipedia had a collage of eight pictures that represented the 1920s in a nutshell. The images include the prohibition period of people destroying the barrels that held alcohol in them. Another image that I noticed was in the photos’ assortment was the late Babe Ruth, who played for the New York Yankees in the 1920s. Another picture that I saw in that collage is a woman holding up a sign fighting for the right to vote. As historians, we have to look at the meaningful aspects of every decade the Earth goes through. Before looking at these images from Google, I thought the 1920s were all about partying and going out in groups to go out dancing. As I look at the images from google, that is true as the photos showcase, but some pivotal points in history play out in the 1920s. I also noticed that most pictures when you search on google are made up of black and white photography because this was a time before colored photography was around. I think it is a shame that most of the pictures showcase the fashion of the era. When initially searching the 1920s, the search doesn’t showcase more photos of American history’s  pivotal moments, such as the women’s suffrage movement and the prohibition period. After looking at the pictures of this time, I am excited to learn more about it!

Citations

• Rossini, Antonio. Throw Back Thursday- the Restaurant Scene in the 1920s. Restaurantsupply.com. Antonio Rossini, June 24, 2016. https://www.restaurantsupply.com/blog/post/throw-back-thursday-the-restaurant-scene-in-the-1920s/. 
• Volvo Trucks In 1920s. n.d. Volvotrucks.com. https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/about-us/history/1920s.html. 

Roberta Carbah

I am a Ramapo senior who is majoring in Elementary Education. I am taking this course because I want to be certified in Social Studies at the middle school level. I graduated from Bergen Community College in the Spring of ’19 with an associate’s in Early Childhood Education. Currently, I am working  at Starbucks as a Shift Supervisor until I obtain my degree from Ramapo.