It really disgusts me to think about our country’s history. Not only because it was full of such racism, but also because it really wasn’t that long ago. I hadn’t known about some of the things that happened in America like spectacle lynchings, but it honestly didn’t surprise me. The thing that really shocked me was that they were a family event. Respectable people would dress up to watch a black person get murdered. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that refined people would enjoy, but who am I to talk? I wasn’t there.

When the professor talked about race records I could see that they were kind of an illogical invention. He was trying to convince us that music was integrated even though society was not, and it wasn’t hard to see. Blacks, whites, Americans, and immigrants worked together to make music that would sell. Behind the scenes, it didn’t matter where a sound came from or what color the person who played it was, it just needed to sound good. And as long as people didn’t know that it came from an integrated band, they’d be happy to listen to it.

Racism is something that defies all logic and I think that music is something that might have helped some people realize that in some small way.