Cotton Club Orchestra

Cotton Club Orchestra

The photo featured here is the orchestra that played at the infamous Cotton Club in Harlem. As Langston Hughes mentioned in his reflective piece about Harlem Renaissance, the Cotton Club was a club exclusively for white patrons in the middle of majority black Harlem. Additionally, all of the staff and performers that worked at the Cotton Club were black. According to blackpast.org, the club was ran by a white mobster who wanted the club to have a plantation. There were also restrictions for the performers: "at least 5’6” tall, light skinned with only a slight tan, and under twenty-one years of age." (http://www.blackpast.org/aah/cotton-club-harlem-1923#sthash.ZZGNb99O.dpuf) Overall this article and this photo featuring an all black orchestra showed the both the progression and regression made by African Americans during the 1920s that Hughes speaks of in his reflection. On one hand, African Americans were being recognized for their artistic abilities and were able to gain jobs outside of manual labor. But on the other hand harmful sterotypes about African Americans were displayed holding back the African American community from being accepted into white American society.

Public Domain

Cotton Club Orchestra, Harlem, 1925. N.d. Black Past. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.blackpast.org/aah/cotton-club-harlem-1923>.

Black Past

1925

Gabriella Green