James Brown was considered one of rock's greatest performers

"The T.A.M.I. Show" is a 1964 film featuring live performances from the biggest names in rock 'n' roll: Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, and the Supremes. The most memorable performance from James Brown and his band the Famous Flames, is regarded as one of the greatest performances in pop music.

Billboard's early music charts were racially segregated

In 1942, the publication introduced the Harlem Hit Parade chart, listing the top 10 records sold at select record stores in the majority-Black borough of New York. In 1945, it changed the chart’s name to Most Played Juke Box Race Records, using the music industry term (“race record”) that identified recordings by Black artists, even if they played music markedly similar to the white artists on the other charts.

Jazz provided a soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement

Songs like Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," which portrayed the grim brutality of lynching, and John Coltrane's "Alabama," which was modeled on the rhythm of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., were the backbeat of the movement.

The Great Migration spread jazz to various parts of the country

The large-scale migration of Black Americans looking to escape Jim Crow laws in the South began in 1915 and helped bring New Orleans music to other parts of the country, including Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

'Shuffle Along,' a 1921 Broadway musical, brought jazz to American musical theater and helped pave the way for Black culture in the 20th century.

Fifty backstage photos of musicians in the 1970s

Elton John, James Brown, Cher, Diana Ross, and many others all have famous photos seen multiple times on album covers, iconic images from events, and more. Rare is the unseen backstage photo of the greats, lounging or rocking out or, like Bo Diddley, frying up some chicken pre-show at the Garden. Peruse this incredible collection of candid shots of 1970s stars waiting in the wings to come on stage.

Jackie "Moms" Mabley was the first woman to headline solo at the Apollo Theater

The comic's act was based on a classic archetype: the fed-up mother who was going to tell it to you straight. She perfected her craft on the Chitlin Circuit, where she became a cultural icon in the Black community, and then had significant mainstream success starting in the 1960s.

Watch a 1934 short film starring Cab Calloway

Singer and bandleader Cab Calloway was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene. He was also one of the biggest names in jazz's swing era and would go on to be the first Black American to have a nationally syndicated radio show and the first to sell a million copies of a record. In this 1934 short film, "Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho," he reenacts his upbeat performances at Harlem's Cotton Club.

The Virginia Slims Circuit helped popularize women's tennis

Following the success of the Original Nine's first tournament, promoter Gladys Heldman worked with Virginia Slims to create a full-scale tour. While short-lived, the Virginia Slims Circuit marked the beginning of women's professional tennis, though it wasn't without complications, including logistical challenges and controversies stemming from its sponsorship by a cigarette brand.

The Black cultural renaissance happened in places other than Harlem

Although the Harlem Renaissance is often cited as the singular Black arts movement of the early 20th century, similar cultural movements were occurring concurrently in other American cities. Places like Kansas City, Washington, DC, and Roanoke, Virginia, also had innovative Black cultural scenes.

Days after her release from prison, Billie Holiday sold out Carnegie Hall

The jazz icon was released early from federal prison on good behavior. Following her arrest, she was effectively prohibited from performing in New York's nightclubs, but she realized she could still perform, so long as it was in a venue that hadn't been deemed a "cabaret." The solution? The famous Carnegie Hall. The show sold out within a week, and the venue became a regular stop for Holiday, who performed there 22 times.

Thousands of Black men held local, state, and federal offices during Reconstruction

Between 1865 and 1877, more than 1,500 Black Americans served in local, state, and federal offices—including 16 in Congress. This unprecedented political participation largely ended after Reconstruction as Jim Crow laws and racial violence suppressed Black voting.

Explore a map of the Harlem Renaissance's nightclubs

Many of the Harlem Renaissance's greatest performances happened after hours, in one of the neighborhood's many nightclubs. This 1932 map, illustrated by Elmer Simms Campbell, highlights key hotspots, with insider tips on when to arrive, who to see, and how to fit in.

In 1956, Althea Gibson became the first Black Grand Slam champion

From 1944 to 1956, Althea Gibson dominated the American Tennis Association circuit, all while Jim Crow laws denied her entry into tournaments or even a hotel room like her fellow white competitors. This Wimbledon video shows her experience becoming the first Black woman to play the tournament in 1951, and meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 1957 when she won.

Some argue the Sears catalog undermined Jim Crow laws in the rural South

When the Sears catalog was popularized, Black Americans didn’t always have an easy time shopping in US stores due to racism and Jim Crow laws. Some say that the Sears catalog was radical at the time for helping Black Americans avoid retail shopping in the South—often a negative experience.

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

Take a look at an early rock 'n' roll artifact

This 1956 jukebox musical, "Rock, Rock, Rock!," is an early example of the burgeoning rock 'n' roll culture—with performances from Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, D.J. Alan Freed, and several others. It was also a catalyst, sending the new youth culture into theaters around the country.

The end of Reconstruction paved the way for Jim Crow segregation

After federal troops withdrew in 1877, white Democrats regained control of Southern governments, dismantled Reconstruction reforms, and imposed segregation laws. By the 1890s, Jim Crow statutes had entrenched racial discrimination and Black disenfranchisement across the South.

The early Los Angeles punk scene found a home in Chinatown

Acts like Black Flag, X, and Circle Jerks performed in unconventional venues like Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Cafe—restaurants in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood that became an integral part of the nascent scene.

Hear the stories of Black congressmen who served during Reconstruction

This podcast explores the Black congressmen of the 1870s, like Hiram R. Revels and Joseph Rainey, many of whom were born into slavery and symbolized the hope of a more racially equal post-Civil War America.

Southern Black Codes sought to preserve prewar racial labor structures

With little federal oversight, Southern states enacted laws effectively reestablishing slavery's economic and social order. These laws, known as the "Black Codes," restricted freed people's movement, labor, and property rights.

A DJ helped popularize the term 'rock 'n' roll' to resell R&B to a broad audience

Cleveland DJ Alan Freed launched his radio show "Moondog's Rock 'n' Roll Party," rebranding R&B records, largely performed by Black artists, as "rock 'n' roll" to appeal to a largely white audience. The name was a double-entendre, describing the sound and the sexual activities it was said to induce.

Learn about political conventions held before the Civil War by Black Americans to organize for civil rights

Beginning in 1830, free Black men and women across the US and Canada held "Colored Conventions"—state and national political meetings that served as a cornerstone of 19th-century Black organizing for civil and human rights.

Billie Holiday ensured performances of 'Strange Fruit' had the right context

In the song's earliest performances at Cafe Society in New York, one of a few truly integrated nightclubs in the society, the song was always performed last, after bar service had stopped, with a single spotlight on Holiday so audiences would pay close attention to the lyrics. Later, Holiday included her ability to perform the song in her concert contracts, allowing her to sing it even if venue owners were nervous about its protest message.

Nine Black students were arrested in 1961 for refusing to stop reading at a segregated Mississippi library

Public libraries across the South were segregated by law, with Black residents directed to separate, underfunded facilities. When nine Tougaloo College students sat down to read at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library, they were arrested. Their act helped the NAACP push for the desegregation of public spaces in Jackson.

The distinctions between 'R&B' and 'rock 'n' roll' were mostly racial

"Rhythm and blues” was a broad name used for African American music in the 1940s after “race music” fell out of favor. Musically speaking, "rock 'n' roll" sounded very similar, though it was marketed to white teenagers rather than Black audiences.

Jazz was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance

The Great Migration transformed New York City's Harlem neighborhood into the epicenter of Black American art, with artists such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith regularly performing. The music not only provided the backbeat to the cultural scene—it often influenced it, with Harlem Renaissance poets, in particular, inspired by jazz's approach to rhythm and improvisation.

Southern rap redefined the sound of hip-hop in the '90s

In the 1980s, most attention focused on New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, and Los Angeles, the epicenter of its burgeoning gangsta variant. By the mid-90s, though, artists like Outkast, Master P, and Missy Elliott shifted the focus to the south.

Chris Rock believes TV ruined stand-up

Chris Rock is one of comedy’s stand-up superstars, breaking through with several specials in the ‘90s. In this interview with stand-up legend David Steinberg, Rock explains how comics began working towards landing a spot on TV rather than focusing on creating a long, inspired stand-up set.

Fearing the corruption of its youth, Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll in 1956.

Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music' albums blurred genre lines

Released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Charles’ records showed that country music, by then largely segregated, was an American music, no matter one’s background.

The NAACP encouraged and accommodated the early Harlem Renaissance

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization better known as the NAACP, recognized the disenchantment Black soldiers who served in World War I experienced when returning home to a segregated country and began advancing, and, in many ways, funding a "New Negro Movement," which would lead to the Harlem Renaissance.

For years, Black players were tacitly banned from professional football leagues

In 1902, Charles Follis was the first Black player to play in a professional football game, and Black players were allowed in years after other leagues banned them. A "gentleman’s agreement” led to the league banning Black players in 1933, until four Black men reintegrated pro football in 1946.

Stand-up became more popular during the Great Depression

The stock market crash of 1929 caused vaudeville theaters to shutter. Audiences were looking for lighthearted distractions from the country’s financial problems, though, and stand-up became more popular, albeit in very different venues.

'The Wiz' reimagined Baum's story for Black America

The 1978 film, produced in part by Motown Productions, starred several popular stars: Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Nipsey Russell and Lena Horne. The music—composed by Charlie Smalls and Luther Vandross, and overseen by Quincy Jones—mirrored songs from the 1939 film.

Black Americans were systematically excluded from juries for much of US history

Literacy tests, poll taxes, and even explicit laws kept Black Americans off juries until well into the 20th century. The Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 mandated that federal juries reflect a fair cross-section of the community, though racial disparities in jury selection persist.

The electric microphone led to a country music boom

The electric microphone provided enhanced audio and greater portability, saving the fledgling record industry and making recording outside of New York and Camden, New Jersey, possible. This proved critical for capturing early country and rock ‘n’ roll.

After her arrest, a technicality made it harder for Holiday to perform

The Cabaret Identification Card was required for all performers in New York nightclubs that served liquor. After her arrest and yearlong imprisonment, the New York Police Department revoked Billie Holiday's card, making it extremely difficult for her to earn money. The video features contemporary jazz musician Christian McBride breaking down the history of cabaret cards and how the ban affected Holiday.

Tour the iconic Sun Studio in Memphis

Sun Studio is responsible for hundreds of hours of American music history, despite its rather modest setup. This tour of the one-room studio is not unlike the tour visitors take, with anecdotes about Elvis, U2, and a pious Bob Dylan, who quickly popped in to pay his respects.