He was the first genius I had ever seen. The moment of first being, and knowing oneself to be, in the presence of genius, is a solemn moment. It is impossible to overstate the significance of a sixteen-year-old Southern boy’s seeing genius, for the first time, in a black.
But genius — fine control over total power, all height and depth, forever and ever? It had simply never entered my mind, for confirming or denying in conjecture, that I would see this for the first time in a black man. You don’t get over that. You stay young awhile longer, with the hesitations, the incertitudes, the half-obediences to crowd-pressure, of the young. But you don’t forget. The lies reel, and contradict one another, and simper in silliness, and fade into shadow. But the seen truth remains. And if this was true, what happened to the rest of it?
Louis opened my eyes wide, and put to me a choice. Blacks, the saying went, were “all right in their place.” What was the “place” of such a man, and of the people from which he sprung?
- Charles L. Black, on seeing Louis Armstrong perform in Austin, Texas, September 1931.
If you made it through the first few minutes of the 20-hour long Ken Burns mini-series Jazz, you might have already heard this quote. I learned recently that hearing this anecdote is what made actually got Ken Burns interested in the topic of jazz. The quote is made all the more amazing by the fact of who Charles L. Black became: one of the lead attorneys for Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision which outlawed segregation in public schools.
It’s a humbling thought, to know such greatness can be bestowed upon one person. It’s also a wonderful thought, to know the power of one. Through music, through sheer talent and presence, one man could create small ripples, ripples which evoke a tidal wave.