Cotton Club

In continuation of NYS Music’s series celebrating the Harlem Renaissance in its centennial years, it is important to highlight the Cotton Club which was instrumental in displaying Black talent. Before it was the Cotton Club, the…

On April 29, 1899, Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington D.C.. Both of his parents were musicians, and so Ellington began his piano studies at the age of seven. Due to his easygoing nature, his friends began calling him "Duke." …

At the start of the twentieth century, many Black Americans, facing racism and discrimination across the country, moved to a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan: Harlem. This neighborhood became a cultural center in the early 1900's, fully…

Looking back into history, the 1920s was a time marked by intense racial and sexual discrimination. In the South, Jim Crow laws were in full effect, leaving African-Americans as second class citizens. Throughout the country, KKK membership…