From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net

On Tue, 30 Jun 2020 09:54:35 -0300, "Open Culture" <open.culture@nntp.alt119.net> wrote:

When American rock and roll made its way to the UK in the 1950s and
60s, along with a burgeoning folk and blues revival, many young
British fans hadn't been conditioned to think of music in the same way
as their U.S. counterparts. "Unlike racially segregated Americans,"
for example, "the Beatles didn't see-or hear-the difference between
Elvis and Chuck Berry," writes Joseph Tirella, "between the Everly
Brothers and the Marvelettes." They also couldn't see playing to
segregated audiences as just one of those social customs one politely
observes when touring abroad.

In 1964, at the height of Beatlemania, the band was booked to play
Florida's Gator Bowl in Jacksonville just after a devastating
hurricane and months after the introduction of the Civil Rights Act
into Congressional deliberations. Major political shifts were
happening in the country and would have happened with or without the
Beatles taking a stand for integration.

But they took a stand nonetheless and used their celebrity power to
show how meaningless the system of Apartheid in the South actually
was. It could, in fact, be annulled by fiat should a group with as
much leverage as the Fab Four refused to play along.

The rider for the September 11 concert "explicitly cited the band's
refusal to perform in a segregated facility," writes Kenneth Womack at
Salon. When concert promoters pushed back, John Lennon flatly stated
in a press conference, "We never play to segregated audiences, and we
aren't going to start now. I'd sooner lose our appearance money."
Despite storm damage and evacuations, the 32,000-seat stadium had sold
out. The Gator Bowl had to relent and desegregate for the evening's
show.

One of the concert's attendees, historian Dr. Kitty Oliver, who
appears in the clip at the top from Ron Howard's Beatles documentary
Eight Days a Week, was a young Beatles fan who hadn't heard the news
about the show desegregating. Determined to go, and saving up enough
money to score a seat near the front row, she remembers fearing the
atmosphere she would encounter:

At the time, I didn't know anything about the group's press conference announcement refusing to perform for an audience where Black patrons
would be forcibly segregated from Whites, probably relegated to the
worse seats farthest away from the stage and maybe subjected to a
threatening atmosphere if they showed up.

Instead, she writes, "the crowd rose, thunderous, in unison, when the
Beatles took the stage. Then tunnel vision set in: Eyes glued to the
front, I sang along to ‘She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah…' full voiced, just as loudly as everyone, all of us lost in the sound." The
band "left behind a legacy that night," writes Womack, having "stood
up to institutional racism and won." It was not a cause-of-the-moment
for them but a deep conviction all four members shared, as Paul
McCartney explains above in an interview with reporter Larry Kane, who
followed the band on their first American tour.

McCartney had been so moved by the events in Little Rock in 1957 that
almost a decade later, he remembered them in his song "Blackbird," as
he explains above. This year, he recalled the band's stand against
segregation in Jacksonville and commented, "I feel sick and angry that
here we are, almost 60 years later, and the world is in shock at the
horrific scenes of the senseless murder of George Floyd at the hands
of police racism, along with the countless others that came before. I
want justice for George Floyd's family, I want justice for all those
who have died and suffered. Saying nothing is not an option." When it
came to issues of injustice, even at the height of their fame, the
Beatles were willing to say-and, more importantly, do-something about
it even if it cost them.

via Salon

Related Content:

Watch The Beatles Perform Their Famous Rooftop Concert: It Happened 50
Years Ago Today (January 30, 1969)

How "Strawberry Fields Forever" Contains "the Craziest Edit" in
Beatles History

A Virtual Tour of Every Place Referenced in The Beatles' Lyrics: In 12
Minutes, Travel 25,000 Miles Across England, France, Russia, India &
the US

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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