Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White
- ISBN-10
- 159051243X
- ISBN-13
- 9781590512432
- Category
- Social Science / Discrimination
- Pages
- 305
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006
- Publisher
- Other Press
- Authors
- Thomas Alexander Sancton, Tommy Sancton
Description
Song for my Fathers is Tom Sanction's memoir of his experience as a young white boy driven by a consuming passion to learn the music and ways of a group of aging black jazzmen in the twilight years of the segregation era. Contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, most of them had played in local obscurity until Preservation Hall launched a nationwide revival of interest in traditional jazz. They called themselves "the mens." And they welcomed the young apprentice into their ranks. The boy was introduced into this remarkable fellowship by his father, an eccentric Southern liberal and failed novelist whose powerful articles on race had made him one of the most effective polemicists of the early Civil Rights movement. Nurtured on his father's belief in racial equality, the aspiring clarinetist embraced the old musicians with boundless love and admiration. In a sense, they became his spiritual fathers and role models. But eventually, his real father, who had first led the boy to "the mens" and shared his reverence for them, recoiled in horror at the idea that his son might lose his way in the world of late-night jazz joints, French Quarter barrooms, and a prevarious life on the margins of society. The tension between a father's determination to control his son's destiny and a boy's abiding passion for music is a major theme of the book. The narrative unfolds against the vivid backdrop of New Orleans in the 1950s and '60s. But that magical town is more than decor; it is perhaps the central player, for this study could not have taken place in any other city in the world. Written several years beefore Katrina crashed into New Orleans and changed its face forever, Song for My Fathers seems all the more moving in the wake of that cataclysm. -- from dust jacket.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Slavery, Race, and American History: Historical Conflict, Trends, and Method, 1866-1953
By John David SmithSee George D. Terry , “ A Study of the Impact of the French Revolution and the Insurrections in Saint - Domingue ... iiin , 65n , 66n ; John D. Duncan , “ Servitude and Slavery in Colonial South Carolina , 1670–1776 " ( Ph.D. diss .
-
Transcending Boundaries: Multi-disciplinary Approaches to the Study of Gender
By John M. Coggeshall, Pamela R. FreseThe essays are arranged so that disciplines and themes interralate--each essay enhances the previous work and introduces the next. Overall, the book is arranged into three systematic approaches to gender studies.
-
Divided We Fall: A History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America
By Philip PerlmutterBen J. Wattenberg , “ Black Progress , ” Transcript of Boston WGBH TV production ( 17 May 1977 ) , 3 ; Black Enterprise ( March 1987 ) ... Vine Deloria , Jr. , We Talk , You Listen ( New York : Macmillan Co. , 1970 ) , 152 ; Oscar Uribe ...
-
Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia
By J. Douglas Smith35 ) segregation on common carriers , 282 Funders , 20-21 , 132 Fairclough , Adam , 109 , 272 , 297 Falls , Nathan , 141 Falls Church , Va . , 140 , 243 Fauquier County , Va . , 180-85 Fellowship Forum , 191 Ferguson , Homer , 47 , 113 ...
-
Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience
By Jonathan D. Sarna, David G. DalinThis text focuses on what it means to be Jewish in America and the different positions held within the Jewish community on past and present church-state issues - whether Orthodox Jews in the military should wear yarmulkes while in uniform - ...
-
Race and Reconciliation in America
By Anne & Emmett LLCIt's an affirmation of what Noel Ignatiev just said. Those from different ethnic groups can integrate and assimilate into white society, and that has not been allowed for the black community. DR. RON WALTERS: Well, yes.
-
The Civil Rights Movement
By Peter B. LevyClark personally pinned Annie Lee Cooper to the ground and pummeled her with his fists in front of a cameraman . On February 1 , King , Abernathy , and over seven hundred demonstrators , many of them schoolchildren , staged a mass ...
-
Prejudice
By Thomas F. PettigrewDefines and describes the nature of prejudice, provides an overview of discrimination in America, and evaluates the efforts to end racial discrimination.
-
Social Crisis and Social Demoralization: The Dynamics of Status in American Race Relations
By Ronald KuykendallAs pointed out by Judge A. Leon Higginbotham (1978), “Not all blacks in Virginia by the 1650s were slaves, but . . . the white colonists by that early date were already beginning to establish a process of debasement and cruelty reserved ...
-
Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism
By Jonathan JudakenRace after Sartre is the first book to systematically interrogate Jean-Paul Sartre’s antiracist politics and his largely unrecognized contributions to critical race theories, postcolonialism, and Africana existentialism. The contributors offer...