new , jazz seemed the ultimate example of “ cultural appropriation ”.
We don ’ t know what Chet Baker ’ s views on race were . He worked in multi-racial groups , and at a time when such a thing was still relatively unusual ( and profoundly unwelcome in parts of the Union ). There are hints , though , that without any imputation of prejudice or racial hatred , he was acutely conscious of its role in American life . He could hardly avoid such a consciousness . Though one tends to assume that racial violence in the US is a phenomenon of the Deep South and of the major industrial cities where thousands of African-Americans settled in the post-Reconstruction period , creating a new and in many ways distinct working class , it ’ s easy to forget – easier because history has applied an airbrush to the moment – that the worst racial massacre in American history took place in Tulsa , Oklahoma , in 1921 . Over the last day of May and the first of June , white mobs , supported by police and National Guard , destroyed more than thirty blocks of what was known as the Black Wall Street , a wealthy African-American district of the city , more formally known as Greenwood . It isn ’ t known to this day how many perished in the massacre ; estimates range from mid-thirties to as many as 250 on both sides of the colour line , but what is lastingly striking as the massacre is remembered on its centenary and in light of the Black Lives Matter movement is that it was a furious and highly systematic expression of racial hatred , which included the use of aeroplanes and aerial incendiary devices .
Intolerance of another sort had erupted in Tulsa four years earlier in November 1917 , when black-robed Knights of Liberty ( the name probably deserves ironic quote-marks ) tarred and feathered members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World , the famous “ Wobblies ”, and ran them out of the state . The men were
16