4

African American Ambassadors Abroad and at Home

As we saw in the case of jazz, African American musicians related to the State Department in complicated ways. They welcomed the chance to appear in the limelight and represent their country. Still, in their role as ambassadors they were also put in the awkward position of answering countless inquiries about American race relations. Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson, eminent African American artists in the fields of jazz and classical music, respectively, had both toured abroad under private arrangements before the Second World War. In the 1950s both of them became highly conspicuous musical ambassadors for the United States. Their performances and their remarks about political matters, framed by dramatic civil rights controversies, drew enormous attention abroad and significant comment at home.

Armstrong’s and Anderson’s international activities were presented to the American public through intensive media coverage. A key figure in this process was Edward R. Murrow, the host of a television news program on CBS entitled See It Now. Before the mid-1950s Murrow had covered overtly controversial topics such as McCarthyism and the relationship between cigarettes and cancer, but by 1955 he was having difficulty convincing sponsors to invest in his show. Increasingly, Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, turned instead to human interest stories, what Friendly called “affectionate portraits” of high-profile personalities.1 Both Armstrong (1955) and Anderson (1957) were profiled on See It Now.² The segment on Armstrong was soon expanded into a feature film entitled Satchmo the Great, which was released in September 1957. Murrow’s attention to these African American artists was unusual. Positive images of African Americans were rare on television at this time, and that African Americans spoke for themselves in these films was rarer still.³

Murrow’s programs increased the American public’s awareness that musicians were speaking on their behalf and invited citizens to consider more closely who should represent them and how. These tours and their reflections in the media thus represented communication in many directions at once. The foreign performances themselves—some privately sponsored, some funded by the State Department—involved musicians, audiences, and diplomats, as well as foreign media. The many press conferences and interviews that took place throughout Armstrong’s and Anderson’s tours allowed them to articulate their own perspectives about music and politics before a large public audience. Murrow’s and Friendly’s depiction of the traveling musicians was also carefully staged and edited, adding another layer of messages. (In 1961 Murrow would be appointed director of the USIA, in part on the strength of his skill in addressing the public.) As Americans became aware of these musicians’ activities abroad, they responded to Murrow and to the State Department with flurries of opinionated letter writing. This circulation of ideas not only illuminates the activities of the musicians themselves; it also reveals how the role of “musical ambassador” took shape and how Americans viewed themselves as participants in world politics.

“AMBASSADOR SATCH”

Although Armstrong appeared extensively in Europe in the 1930s, these earlier tours were viewed as part of the music business, not as political events. His public persona as an ambassador developed later in his career, in part for marketing purposes. As Penny Von Eschen and Terry Teachout have described it, the catalyst was a provocative article in the New York Times. The article’s author, political reporter Felix Belair, asserted that “America’s secret weapon is a blue note in a minor key. Right now its most effective ambassador is Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong.”4 A month after the article appeared, Armstrong gave an interview to U.S. News and World Report in Paris. The questions laid a heavy emphasis on the political effectiveness of jazz (“Louis, do you think that hot jazz will end the ‘cold war’?”). Armstrong did not disappoint, making enthusiastic comments on how seriously Europeans approached jazz, the pleasure of playing for heads of state, and the large crowds jazz was attracting abroad.⁵ In the two years preceding these events, the record producer George Avakian, at Columbia Records, had begun to rerelease classic jazz recordings on Columbia’s new Microgroove long-playing records. Avakian, actively cultivating a commercial market for jazz, saw an opportunity in these endorsements of Armstrong as a diplomat.6 He quickly released a record entitled Ambassador Satch, which purported to be live audio from Armstrong’s 1955 European tour. This recording included some genuine concert audio, but some tracks were studio recordings overdubbed with audience applause to simulate a live performance.⁷ The enthusiasm of Armstrong’s foreign audiences was now evidence of his diplomatic effectiveness, and this trick of editing guaranteed that listeners would perceive it.

Murrow began filming his 1955 profile of Armstrong before Belair’s article appeared. He must have become aware of the article while making the film, for in his Paris interview he introduced Armstrong as an “ambassador,” and in the film’s narration he quoted Belair’s “blue note” phrase. Armstrong was ready with comments on this topic: “That’s one thing about good jazz. . . . When they pick up those instruments, we all speak the same language.” Murrow asked Armstrong, “You going to Russia?”—to which Armstrong replied with characteristic wordplay, “I’m rushin’ there just as fast as they can send me. After all, my public is the same all over the world.” Armstrong related a story about his experience in Berlin in 1953, recalling that many Russians came through the Iron Curtain to hear him play at the Hot Club. With evident delight he explained twice that the Russians called him “our Louie.”⁸ Murrow’s film promoted Armstrong’s ambassadorship with extensive footage of large European audiences listening closely, smiling, clapping, and cheering wildly. If any of Belair’s readers had doubted his word that Europeans were crazy for Armstrong’s jazz, Murrow’s film offered incontrovertible proof. Subsequent interviews throughout the 1950s echoed the questions about ambassadorship and offered Armstrong opportunities to retell the Berlin story, which would become the stuff of legend in jazz circles.⁹

The See It Now episode offered a sense of interpersonal immediacy. It featured close-ups of audience members as well as performers, and Murrow allowed a good deal of time for the artists to speak in their own words—strategies he would use again in his coverage of Marian Anderson. The episode about Armstrong included an interview in which Murrow, typecast as the hopelessly square white outsider, earnestly asked, “What’s a cat?” and “What is the meaning of gutbucket?” Calling Murrow “Daddy,” Armstrong answered his questions with singing and laughter, roving from one idea to the next in a way that was likely hard for viewers to understand. (One critic called Armstrong’s presentation “vivid yet almost inarticulate.”)¹⁰ Despite Murrow’s wooden questions and the extreme contrast in manner between the two men, their laughing together and their casual proximity within the camera’s frame offered a companionable feeling (figure 9). It seems likely that this feeling extended to the home audience. In a 1956 study, psychologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl noted that television allowed people to meet in a “seeming face-to-face relationship,” “as if they were in the circle of one’s peers.”11 The virtue of the interview was not its verbal content alone but also its affording the audience the illusion of a personal conversation with Armstrong.

Figure 9. Edward R. Murrow and Louis Armstrong in See It Now, “Two American Originals,” 1955. Courtesy of CBS News Archives.

It seems likely that Murrow intended this style of presentation to open the eyes of white Americans to Armstrong’s charisma and, more broadly, to allow the home audience to meet African Americans through the medium of television. Murrow had long been committed to the cause of equal opportunity for African Americans. As president of the National Student Federation of America in the early 1930s, Murrow led a successful campaign to desegregate the organization.¹² He had produced several episodes of See It Now that focused on civil rights, notably “A Study of Two Cities,” which described the effects of unequal access to schools on African American families in the South.¹³ In general, Murrow intended See It Now “to provide people with raw material upon which intelligent opinion can be formed.”14 Yet his approach to controversial subjects was also highly personal, conducted through interviews and featuring close-up shots of individual citizens affected by the controversy over school integration. This strategy not only provoked viewers to consider the evidence; it also stirred their empathy, specifically prompting a compassionate interpretation of that evidence.¹⁵

To obtain new footage for the subsequent feature film, Satchmo the Great, Murrow sponsored Armstrong’s 1956 trip to the Gold Coast, then in the process of decolonization. (It would soon become Ghana.) Although Armstrong had traveled widely, he had never been to Africa because he could not turn a profit there. Murrow surely saw the dramatic potential in returning him to “the land of his ancestors” and filming the result.¹⁶ Local organizational support for Armstrong’s performances was provided not by the American embassy but by the British colonial Department of Information Services and, to a lesser extent, by the nascent Arts Council of Ghana. The film gives the distinct impression that the excited crowds and musical salutes by highlife bands and tribal musicians were spontaneous manifestations—yet most of them were prearranged by the staff of the Department of Information Services, the Arts Council, and, to a lesser extent, Murrow’s crew.¹⁷ Murrow’s narration elides the question of sponsorship, saying only that Armstrong “went back at the invitation of the Prime Minister.” Although the Arts Council of Ghana had worked hard to persuade chiefs and their retinues to travel to meet Armstrong, Murrow says only that “the chiefs came out from their villages to entertain the local boy who made good.”¹⁸ This phrasing further reinforced the idea of the tour as an act of ambassadorship—even a “homecoming” to a place where Armstrong had never been—rather than a commercial venture.

Robert Raymond, who worked for the Department of Information Services, attested that his office tried to allow the citizens of the Gold Coast opportunity to give a hospitable welcome to Armstrong despite the controlling and intrusive activity of the film crew (figure 10). Information Services staff promised to deliver throngs of cheering fans for the film, and they went to extreme lengths to assemble an audience. One official attempted to have Armstrong’s visit declared a national holiday so that audiences could attend a daytime concert for filming. As a result of these efforts Satchmo the Great includes astonishing and moving footage of a vast crowd of dancing people. Understandably, the director chose not to show that the crowd charged the stage and were beaten back by police with clubs. Nor does the film reveal Armstrong’s shock and disgust.¹⁹ Satchmo the Great glossed over both the violence and the constructed nature of the scene, allowing its viewers to see only the warmly cordial interactions between Armstrong’s band and the people who welcomed them.

Figure 10. The filming of Louis Armstrong’s concert in Accra, Gold Coast (later Ghana), 1956. Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.

For the end of the film Murrow also arranged to have Leonard Bernstein conduct a performance of “St. Louis Blues” with the Stadium Symphony Orchestra of New York, featuring Armstrong as soloist. This event was likewise carefully staged. Originally billed as a jazz concert, with the orchestra added as an extra for the film, the combination of classical music and jazz was meant to bring musicians and listeners together, with the charismatic personalities of Bernstein, Armstrong, and Brubeck cementing the performance’s appeal and pedigree. The filming made heavy demands on the audience: the sequence was shot not during the concert but afterward, and the audience was asked to remain late into the night.20 It is evident that the film succeeded with some viewers. A reviewer for the Chicago Defender recalled that the collaborative performance of “St. Louis Blues” with legendary composer W.C. Handy in the audience was “deeply moving.” The film is peculiar in its leaps from one performance scene to another, but it is effective in its portrayal of Armstrong as both a compelling musician and a charming personality. In a conversation about the film Armstrong himself told a radio interviewer, “You gonna enjoy that.”²¹

LITTLE ROCK AND ARMSTRONG’S AMBASSADORSHIP

Murrow’s films went beyond mere news reporting to virtually creating the news. The carefully crafted representations of Armstrong as ambassador were so successful that many commentators came to believe that his international tours were sponsored by the State Department, although most of them were not.22 Armstrong readily adopted the terms of his publicity as part of his public persona. “Call me ambassador of music,” he announced at a reception for a retiring ambassador in Washington, DC.²³ As Daniel Stein has pointed out, Armstrong relished colorful and sometimes contradictory ways of presenting himself.²⁴ His arrival at the status of ambassador added a flourish to the narrative of his rise from an impoverished childhood. It also offered provocative ironies. An ambassador who could not enter public spaces as an equal in his own country, a diplomat who frequently denied any knowledge of politics—these paradoxes only added to the attractions and expressive possibilities of the role.

Indeed, they drew Armstrong into a controversy that damaged his new reputation. In September of 1957, nine African American students tried to attend the formerly all-white Little Rock Central High School. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to block the students from entering the school. After the students and their supporters endured weeks of abuse at the hands of an unruly mob, President Eisenhower took control over the National Guard and ordered them to protect the students.²⁵ The shocked nation witnessed the violence in newspapers and on television; many in the North had not experienced conditions in the segregated South in this visceral way before the media brought these images into their homes.²⁶

Performing artists and State Department music programs immediately became part of the national conversation about Little Rock. Before Eisenhower intervened, Armstrong responded to the outrageous attacks on the children in Little Rock by saying that he would refuse to tour the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department: “the way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.”²⁷ Armstrong’s remarks were widely distributed in both mainstream and black newspapers, and they generated enough attention that reporters solicited comment from other performers.²⁸ Eartha Kitt responded, “Armstrong is absolutely right. We shouldn’t go to Russia preaching things we are not.” Lena Horne said, “I, too, would decline to appear in Russia if I were asked by the Government, because I would fear embarrassing questions by the press, especially the Soviet press.”²⁹ Sammy Davis Jr. told the press he agreed with Armstrong, though “not with his choice of words.” Nat “King” Cole, who was having difficulty finding a sponsor for his own television program and could not afford to offend, expressed disappointment but declined to criticize the government.30

The extensive coverage of Armstrong’s remarks about Little Rock and his renunciation of the Soviet tour brought negative attention to the government’s use of musicians. Throughout September and October the State Department received many letters from citizens and from members of Congress who did not want Armstrong to be their ambassador.³¹ Some people refused the necessity of such representation altogether: “the American taxpayers and decent citizens don’t give a hoot what any country think [sic] of our way of life.”³² Some explicitly rejected Armstrong on racist grounds, suggesting that an African American jazz musician would be an inappropriate representative for America as a whole. Others said that Armstrong’s disrespectful criticism of the government disqualified him: a man “who publicly scoffed at his President and slurred him in uncouth language” seemed unfit for the honor of a state-sponsored tour, and his words might even encourage foreign nations to look down on the United States.³³ Some letter-writers brought several of these motivations together. A letter to Alabama senator Lister Hill combined contempt for jazz with concern about Armstrong’s impropriety: “Sir, not because I think his music is drivel, which it is, but I certainly can’t see how a man who says ‘the government can go to hell!’ can be any sort of an effective spokesman for it.”³⁴ Although Armstrong’s performances in concerts and films drew broad audiences, much of the public still thought of him as a mere grinning entertainer.³⁵ The State Department’s file on Armstrong for 1957 contains not a single defense of his ambassadorship from the American public.

As the State Department pointed out in countless replies to its critics, Armstrong had not yet been formally invited to make the tour that he had so dramatically refused. In fact, the Lacy-Zarubin cultural exchange treaty with the Soviet Union was not signed until 1958. Before that time it was very difficult to arrange for official exchange visits because of restrictions on travel between the two countries. In addition, Soviet leaders frowned on American jazz, and they were unlikely to permit Armstrong to enter the country (chapter 7).³⁶ Through the intervention of Marshall Stearns, Armstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser, had been approached about the possibility of a tour. Indeed, the Music Advisory Panel had approved Armstrong for performances in the Near East in November 1955, but the proposal had been tabled because his fees were so high.³⁷ It appears, then, that the controversy concerned a hypothetical tour rather than a specific, planned event. With encouragement from reporters, though, Armstrong and Glaser speculated freely about the possibility of a government-sponsored tour. They had no reason for discretion: the idea of sending jazz to the Soviet Union was good publicity for Armstrong, dramatic and compelling.38 Armstrong would travel only once under State Department sponsorship, spending four months in Africa during 1960 and 1961. Of course, his international impact as an “unofficial ambassador” both before and after this official tour was tremendous. The State Department acknowledged his importance by following his activities with great interest and offering unofficial logistical assistance even while he toured for profit under his own management.

Armstrong never did make it to the Soviet Union, but the idea of doing so was a persistent part of his self-concept. In one of his scrapbooks from 1961, he kept an article from an Arkansas newspaper. As the article reported it, Glaser had handed Armstrong a telegram and announced that “it’s about 99 per cent sure for Russia,” perhaps for the fall of that year. The clipping is labeled, in Armstrong’s own hand, “Little Rock ARK USA!!!”—suggesting that for Armstrong the idea of a Soviet tour remained tied to his most conspicuous moment of political protest.³⁹

MARIAN ANDERSON RESPONDS TO LITTLE ROCK

When Armstrong’s words about the government going to hell were first published soon after the beginning of the Little Rock crisis in September, Marian Anderson was already en route to Asia for a State Department–sponsored tour. Reporters in Hawaii asked her to comment on Little Rock, but her words were opaque: “One has feelings . . . but now is not the time for me to say something.”⁴⁰ Anderson was dogged by questions about Little Rock and Armstrong’s response throughout her Asian tour. At one point the director of Catholic Relief Services in Vietnam cancelled Anderson’s previously arranged visit to a refugee camp outside of Saigon on the grounds that the visit seemed like a left-wing “political deal” that “had to do with Little Rock.”⁴¹ Anderson was asked again and again about racial politics in the United States, and the diplomats were overjoyed by her responses. The American mission in Taipei sent word back to the State Department that Anderson “impressed the local reporters with her polite and cordial attitude, while at the same time passing off in a most friendly way all questions about Little Rock and Louis Armstrong.”⁴² Armstrong had been quoted in the American and foreign press as saying that he would no longer play in Arkansas because Faubus “might hear a couple of notes—and he don’t deserve that.”43 Recalling those words, an Asian journalist asked Anderson whether she would perform for Faubus:

REPORTER.Miss Anderson, would you like to sing to Governor Faubus in Little Rock?

ANDERSON.If it could help at all, I should be very delighted to. If Governor Faubus would be in the frame of mind to accept it for what it is, for what he could get from it, I would be very delighted to do it.⁴⁴

Anderson’s comments were quoted extensively in the Asian press, but because the U.S. press was understandably preoccupied with events in Little Rock, her tour received almost no attention at home while it was happening. Americans first became aware of her viewpoint in late December, after her return, when Murrow’s coverage of her tour on See It Now aired in prime time.

Murrow and Friendly had arranged for a CBS film crew to follow Anderson through Asia, documenting her interactions with royalty, Asian interviewers, schoolchildren, refugees, music lovers, and American soldiers. The American public responded with extraordinary warmth. Viewers addressed hundreds of letters praising the show to Murrow, CBS, Anderson, and the sponsor, the International Telephone and Telegraph Company. The letters describe Americans’ thinking about the Cold War, race relations, and the practice of musical diplomacy. This is the only State Department–sponsored tour for which we have such extensive information about its reception in the United States, so it allows us an uncommon look at how Americans viewed their country’s musical diplomacy.

In “The Lady from Philadelphia” Murrow included some discussion of race relations, a topic addressed on television news but not in prime time programming and not at all in the official propaganda films of this era.⁴⁵ Coverage of America’s racial problems in “The Lady from Philadelphia” seems curiously indirect and understated by today’s standards, or even by the standards of the 1960s. In one pivotal scene in the film Anderson placed racial injustice firmly in the past tense, as a story with a happy ending.⁴⁶ In a carefully arranged response to a Thai child’s question—“Miss Marian Anderson, what is your favorite song?”—Anderson cited the lyrics of the spiritual “Trampin’,” telling a classroom of schoolchildren that the spirituals came from a time “when Negroes were sad,” and that the words meant “walking along slowly and very hard because you have on your shoulders many unpleasant things.”⁴⁷ She then went on to explain African American history and the history of the spiritual in a most forgiving way:

And so the song means “when you go to the other land, everything will be beautiful.” . . . Abraham Lincoln, one of the presidents of whom you have learned much, made for the Negroes in America a freedom, we say “emancipation”—you know the word freedom, hm? And after this freedom, for which they were most grateful, their songs began to be more gay. Why? Because they began to feel that they—your word [gestures to chalkboard]—“belong.” It was Abraham Lincoln with his proclamation (they know the word proclamation?) The word “proclamation” means a paper that is written to say “now we will do the thing in a new way.” And this new way was of great benefit to the Negroes in the United States.48

This message mirrored perfectly the USIA’s portrayals of race in written propaganda materials sent abroad. A 1956 pamphlet claimed that “the Story of the American Negro since his emancipation in 1863 has been one of constant progress towards full enjoyment of the rights and privileges of free men.”⁴⁹ As a matter of policy the USIA refrained from criticizing southern racism, in part out of fear that southern Democrats in Congress would discontinue the agency’s funding. One element of that restraint was the decision not to address racism in the compelling medium of film.⁵⁰ Because the Anderson broadcast was privately funded, Murrow could and did mention the existence of racial discrimination; yet the upbeat tenor of the story Anderson told allowed white viewers in the United States to feel satisfied that they were being portrayed in a positive light. Although the USIA had already made a documentary film about Anderson in 1955, Murrow’s film was picked up by the USIA for international distribution.⁵¹

At another important moment in the film, Anderson testified to the triumph of religious faith over racial injustice. An Indian interviewer, Tara Ali Baig, asked Anderson about the episode in 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall. Anderson declined to dwell on this famous instance of her personal suffering from racial prejudice. But later, when Baig asked about the importance of religious faith, Anderson discussed the prejudice she endured, all the while emphasizing that faith allowed her to transcend such difficulty:

ANDERSON.It gives you a peace of mind, it gives you an understanding of your fellow men, even though in some instances they behave so poorly. . . . And therefore when things happen along the way which might pull one up rather sharply through disappointment, you think on your faith, and you go back, so to speak, to the well to be replenished.

BAIG.Does it sum it up to say, “to see it through to the end?”

ANDERSON.Yes, and you know, there is a Negro spiritual called [sings] “I open my mouth to the Lord and I never will turn back, I will go, I shall go, to see what the end will be.” And it sums up so much of what so many people need to feel who don’t find all of these wonderful things around them. I will go and I shall go to see what the end will be. Why? Because I believe in what I will find at the end.52

Although Anderson’s words about disappointment and bad behavior might seem elliptical, in the context of Baig’s previous question about the DAR they came across as expressing a firm intent to rise above petty injustices, to be both better and more forgiving than her persecutors. That she sang this intent through a spiritual, as well as speaking it, underscored her credibility both as an authentic member of the oppressed African American community and as a person of faith who was assured of eventual triumph over that oppression.

AMERICA RESPONDS TO MARIAN ANDERSON

Anderson’s striking onscreen presence and her remarkable voice seized the attention of Americans who saw the episode. But her account of faith in the face of difficulty was just as gripping and spoke directly to the dilemmas of the day. Many American viewers realized right away that “The Lady from Philadelphia” concerned more than foreign relations; the program compelled them to consider how they might relate to this elegant black woman who was speaking for them. The fan mail sent to CBS about the program reveals a variety of searching responses to this mixture of foreign and domestic concerns.

The idea that Anderson herself had passed through suffering to transcendent redemption led dozens of letter-writers to call her a “saint,” or “Christ-like,” a notion cued by Murrow’s narration. Some heard the show as a call to reform their own lives, recognizing their own racism more clearly through Anderson’s testimony. One viewer wrote, “If I have ever harbored any prejudice within me, Marian Anderson showed how ignoble and stupid such feelings are.”⁵³ Another described her situation this way: “We are also a family, and of a group . . . who are very much on the fence about desegregation for many reasons, the main one being that, as our knowledge of the colored is confined to our experience with servants alone, we feel the race to be ‘childlike,’ ‘primitive’ and unfit for responsibility as yet—Miss Anderson, as an example of what can be achieved by a leader of her (or any other) race makes us resolve to think twice before making such easy judgements.”⁵⁴ Many church and community study groups, particularly those run by women, requested copies of the script. The Women’s Missionary Societies of several Protestant denominations had chosen the theme of “race prejudice” as a study topic that year; and the Methodist Information Service encouraged members of the church to write to CBS about the show.55 Anderson’s ethical message was an important part of her appeal.

Although Anderson’s usual concert repertoire on her foreign and U.S. tours consisted mainly of European art songs and operatic excerpts, the televised version of the tour gave pride of place to sacred music, thus reinforcing the religious imagery that dominated the spoken parts of the documentary.⁵⁶ Anderson’s rendering of Schubert’s “Ave Maria” drew comment from many who watched the program. The script called especially prominent attention to the value of concert spirituals, both as art and as religious testimony. Footage of Anderson singing “Go Down, Moses” in a Christian church in Vietnam was both unexpected—presenting familiar Christian symbols in an unfamiliar language and setting—and revealing, showing solemn parishioners held in Anderson’s thrall. For some who saw the program, the spirituals were novel and compelling. Julia Morris wrote about Anderson to her local television station in St. Louis, Missouri: “She sang one song that I would like to find, but I do not know the title. It was something about Him holding the little babies in His hand. Would you please send me this information?”⁵⁷ Anderson’s tendency to sing with her eyes closed and hands outstretched, as if in prayer, helped viewers identify with her as a person of faith.⁵⁸ Although many stated their appreciation in Christian terms, this was by no means exclusively the case. Many with typically Jewish surnames praised the spiritual quality and universality of Anderson’s presentation.

Viewers who supported the civil rights movement wanted to use the program to educate their neighbors and fellow citizens. Margery Ware of Bethesda, Maryland, wrote to Murrow that the program “must have had a great educational impact upon those viewers whose prejudice stems from being uninformed.”⁵⁹ Most of the people who sent fan letters requested that the program be rebroadcast or distributed to schools. Emma McFarland of Rutherfordton, North Carolina, explained: “I think [repeating the program] would help to overcome the prejudice which exists in our own country, especially in the Southland. I don’t see how any one could see and hear Marian Anderson as she was on that program and not feel more kindly toward her race.”⁶⁰ Many of these favorable letters originated in major northern metropolitan areas, but a good number came from the South as well. For writers who already supported civil rights, it was easy to sympathize with Anderson as an advocate for a cause they shared.

Although the show was not carried by CBS affiliates in Montgomery, Alabama, or Columbus, Georgia, it seems to have aired in most of the South—yet only a tiny minority of the extant letters expressed disapproval of the program. The writer of one thought that Anderson was criticizing the United States for being hard on Negroes; another said Anderson was unqualified as a northerner to speak about the Little Rock situation; another called the show NAACP propaganda; and another defended the DAR’s actions regarding Constitution Hall in 1939.61 Some who adored the program seemed to be praising Anderson in spite of their views about her race. One writer in Virginia suggested that including performers of several ethnicities in a “melting pot”–style program would be a more accurate way to represent America, implying that one black performer could not represent the white majority.⁶²

On the whole, though, the response was overwhelmingly positive, praising the music as well as the politics. Dozens of viewers thanked Murrow for presenting his message “in good taste”—which seems to mean that compared to other coverage of America’s racial problems they had seen on television, viewers found this program attractive, polite, and decent. The idea of “taste” applied both to Murrow’s work and to Anderson’s. Anderson’s strategy of self-presentation reflects an approach common among African American women who worked for civil rights: their feminine, cultivated middle-class respectability was essential to their work for the cause.⁶³ The 1956 code of the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters asserted that “it is the responsibility of television to bear constantly in mind that the audience is primarily a home audience, and consequently that television’s relationship to the viewers is that between guest and host.”⁶⁴ The letters from Americans to CBS and Murrow indicate that viewers found Anderson a gracious and well-mannered guest.

For viewers who self-identified in their letters as African American, the show was very meaningful. Mary Louise Hinton of Kansas City cited her “overwhelming pride” in Anderson, saying that “her answers to questions concerning our (Negroes) [sic] plight in the United States were perfect.”⁶⁵ A fifteen-year-old girl in Mississippi found the program inspiring because “it made me know my brothers and I may be able to do great things—perhaps even to help people of other countries to be friends of ours.”⁶⁶ Like the rest of the audience, black audience members responded to Anderson’s dignified, even “queenly,” self-presentation; but they were especially thrilled that these images were being broadcast for their fellow citizens.

In addition to addressing these domestic concerns, the program offered a concrete and personal way of understanding diplomacy, describing Anderson as an artist who won friends for America abroad (figure 11). Sputnik had been launched in October 1957, and dozens of letters referred to Anderson as the countermeasure to that development: “Marian Anderson in Asia was worth more than 200 Sputniks in space.”67 Many American viewers voiced the opinion that cultural diplomacy was far more appealing than other forms of negotiation with remarks such as “she accomplished more than all our petty politicians put together.”⁶⁸ The program offered both respite from news coverage of unpleasant matters and a way to engage pleasurably with the world situation. “In these days of Little Rock and Sputnik,” wrote a viewer in Massachusetts, “it is indeed heartening to see Art speaking to the people of the world.”⁶⁹ Some letter-writers praised cultural diplomacy as positive and effective propaganda: “an example of what Americans can and should do to sell Democracy and defeat our enemies who plot the destruction of our beloved country.”⁷⁰

Figure 11. Marian Anderson and her accompanist, Franz Rupp, are greeted by South Korean president Syngman Rhee, 23 September 1957. Looking on: Sul Kuk-Whan of the sponsoring newspaper Seige Ilbo in Seoul; Lee Ki-poong, Speaker of the National Assembly; Marcus W. Scherbacher, cultural attaché, American embassy Seoul. RG 59-G-96-206, National Archives.

The religious element that was so important to the audience’s thinking about race at home also figured in their ideas about the world situation. For some this element was manifest as a desire for outreach that was grounded in Christian brotherhood: sending Anderson as a diplomat meant “sending love personified, not just ammunition, abroad to those whom we are concerned with today more than ever before.”71 Others saw in Anderson a “missionary” who might spread the Christian faith worldwide and bring peace in the process. One writer who saw the Cold War as a moral struggle against godless Communism hoped that such missionaries might “make countries forget small petty questions and develop big, broad, Christian plans.”⁷² Anderson’s own mother regarded her daughter’s work as a spiritual mission of this kind. She wrote to her daughter: “we thank Providence, that you were sent to Foreign Lands, that you may acquaint nations and peoples of Him, the giver of your Divine Voice through song.”⁷³

Murrow’s narration mentioned the influence of Soviet propaganda, especially in India; and American viewers clearly recognized that their country’s continued racial discrimination was hurting its image abroad. As one viewer put it, “That picture did more to mend what Mr. Faubus ruined than all the words President Eisenhower could ever say to the Asians.”⁷⁴ Carol Denison of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, hoped the State Department would distribute the film widely abroad to diplomats “trying to cope with the effects of TV shots of mobsters in Little Rock attacking from behind.”⁷⁵ The historian Mary Dudziak has demonstrated the link between worldwide public opinion and desegregation in the United States. Policy makers and jurists felt enormous pressure to ensure justice at home because it was impossible to sell America’s message abroad while the country’s image was tarnished by obvious and cruel inequality.⁷⁶ The response to the Anderson documentary indicates that this imperative was felt not only by the government leaders Dudziak describes but also by ordinary Americans who were waking up to their role as world citizens.

The medium of television helped them become alert to this role, and 1957 was early enough in television’s history that viewers were self-conscious about the medium. Many had only recently purchased their television sets, and several remarked that “this program alone was worth the price of the set.”⁷⁷ One prescient audience member remarked on television’s “tremendous ability to make visual and thus more personal peoples, conditions, and events that would otherwise not be felt by persons separated in space and time.”⁷⁸ Along those lines many viewers described the thrill of looking directly at Asian people for the first time: a Sunday school teacher in Texas “enjoyed the interesting faces of those children in faraway places,” and a Californian “felt they were my next door neighbors.”79 This new connection with and sympathy for people abroad worked together with the discourses about race relations and propaganda to make Americans more acutely conscious that their reputation among foreign peoples might matter. (As one viewer summarized the film: “Wonderful politics, a slap to Little Rock, and soothing to the Asian people, and we need to sooth [sic] them believe me.”)⁸⁰ Of course, in the case of this particular film the same novelty and sympathy could apply equally well to white citizens who were not personally acquainted with African Americans: a viewer in Louisiana noted that “the race problem here would be greatly aided if Southerners could see and know more of such dignified, competent negro leaders as Marian Anderson and Ralph Bunche.”⁸¹ Murrow’s strategy was predicated on this principle: the strong words and character of Marian Anderson, brought into America’s living rooms, could change hearts and minds.

Thus, Anderson’s religion, social class, and chosen musical styles combined with her compelling personal story and the dramatization of cultural diplomacy to make it possible for some part of the predominantly white television audience to embrace her as their representative. Many of the fan letters said so directly. As a viewer in Pittsburgh put it, “We ordinary folk who stay at home, doing our jobs, raising our families, and trying to keep informed, find great satisfaction in being represented around the world by the truly great such as Marian Anderson.” A viewer in Detroit exclaimed: “There is no doubt in our mind that Marian Anderson, with her humility simplicity and high faith aside of her miraculous artistry and voice like flowing gold—is the right and the best ambassador for [the] U.S.”⁸²

AFRICAN AMERICAN AMBASSADORSHIP

The contrast between these glowing terms and the vituperative language directed at the State Department denouncing Armstrong’s potential ambassadorship is noteworthy—all the more so since official reports indicate that Armstrong was thoughtful and careful about how he presented the United States. Although Armstrong’s strongly worded comments at home received widespread media attention, his words while actually on tours abroad, official or not, were usually as circumspect as Anderson’s. According to one source, Armstrong sought guidance from USIA staff in Buenos Aires about how to answer questions from the public in Argentina.⁸³ The PAO at the American embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, reported to the State Department that Armstrong’s answers to questions about race were “straightforward but moderate,” and the embassy in Caracas indicated that his remarks concerning Little Rock were “particularly favorable,” displaying “surprising decorum.”84 A press report suggests that in Buenos Aires Armstrong did complain that “the government” was “run by Southerners”—but he also stated that blacks were now refusing to be pushed around.⁸⁵ Frequently he claimed to have little knowledge of politics, deploying folksy sayings like “A note’s a note in any language” or “the reason I don’t bother with politics is the words is so big.”⁸⁶ The descriptions that diplomatic posts sent home about Armstrong are congruent with diplomats’ reports about Anderson’s “non-committal replies and her careful explanations.”⁸⁷ Of course, the American public had little way of knowing what its ambassadors were accomplishing: the State Department’s original agreement with ANTA had explicitly prohibited advocacy directed at Americans on behalf of the Cultural Presentations program. Only after revisions to the program in the early 1960s did U.S. officials routinely explain musical diplomacy to U.S. citizens.⁸⁸

If Anderson had to tread a narrow path in gaining respect from the American public—modeling the highest kind of cultivated respectability—Armstrong’s path was narrower still. Many citizens and congressional representatives criticized him for his outspokenness about Little Rock. Jazz was still a hard sell to Americans whose musical views were shaped by race prejudice. By this time, too, many jazz critics had turned against Armstrong because his musical style was old-fashioned, his personal style too ingratiating. John S. Wilson, a critic who played an important role in the State Department’s selection of jazz ensembles, wrote about Armstrong: “It is somewhat disturbing to realize that the Armstrong group’s performances are being seen all over the world and are widely publicized as outstanding examples of the propaganda value of American jazz. There is no question of Mr. Armstrong’s merits as an entertainer. It is natural that audiences in all countries should be drawn to him. . . . But, except for occasional instances, it would be misleading if the antics of Mr. Armstrong and his colleagues were to be accepted as representative of well-played jazz.”⁸⁹ No matter how often Armstrong was hailed in the press as an ambassador, his ambassadorship remained more difficult for Americans to accept than Anderson’s.⁹⁰

As we saw in chapter 3, jazz musicians wanted to be included in the Cultural Presentations program, and jazz critics argued that jazz musicians should represent the United States. Nonetheless, writings on the role of African American jazz artists who toured for the State Department have tended to portray them as cultural outsiders who worked against the government as much as they did for it. Penny Von Eschen cites evidence that Armstrong expressed his ideas about race in moderate tones while he was abroad, but she then attributes Armstrong’s decision to deflect questions about race to political pressure: it “may well have been the price he had to pay the government for continuing to work.”91 Yet even right after Armstrong’s heated remarks about Little Rock in the fall of 1957, U.S. government officials continued to provide him with logistical assistance throughout his privately funded tour of Latin America. When embassy officials inquired about whether they should continue to help Armstrong after his inflammatory comments, the State Department instructed them to “avoid official involvement but extend normal good offices in arrangements beneficial to American commercial enterprize [sic]. Mission should be able to explain its action as strictly service function not based on evaluation or judgment of the commercial enterprize.”⁹² While the department was keeping a certain distance from Armstrong, we have no evidence that officials attempted to silence him. On the contrary, they expedited his band’s visas to ensure his timely arrival throughout the tour.⁹³ These are not the actions of a government intent on stifling its critic. Indeed, despite the American public’s qualms, the State Department recognized the effectiveness of jazz and Armstrong alike. Telegrams between Washington and diplomatic posts attest that officials saw his performances as a valuable way to get people abroad excited about American culture. As early as 1958, jazz critic Ralph Gleason also noticed that Armstrong’s criticism of the U.S. government was effective abroad as a shining example of free speech.⁹⁴

In retelling Armstrong’s story, one might be tempted to dramatize him as a political hero by framing his ambassadorship as a subversive act—and it has become commonplace to refer to him as “the real ambassador,” suggesting that despite his cooperation with the government, he retained an aura of authenticity.⁹⁵ Nonetheless, fidelity to the historical record requires acknowledging his moments of discretion alongside his protests. The challenge in describing Anderson’s role, in which her conciliatory words come to the fore, is nearly the opposite. Some historians have suggested that prominent black leaders such as Anderson who spoke mildly and cooperated with the U.S. government were compromised and could not be effective as spokespersons for civil rights.⁹⁶ The media scholar Sasha Torres has noted that television portrayals of blacks that soothe white viewers, such as “The Lady from Philadelphia,” often reinforce the status quo rather than resist it.⁹⁷ If Armstrong was too much a firebrand, Anderson may not have shaken her American audience enough.

Terry Teachout claims that in Anderson’s case collaboration with cultural or political authorities might compromise her authenticity as a civil rights advocate. He then uses that claim to argue that Anderson should have represented her own ethnicity in music rather than becoming a classically trained singer. Implying that blacks’ musical assimilation into the dominant culture may be detrimental to their art, he writes, “it is arguable that [Anderson’s] pursuit of dignity at all costs—a perfectly understandable response to the refusal of many whites to treat any black, however talented, with respect—may have limited her as an artist, just as it has limited other black artists of similar temperament, including the classical singers Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman and the actor Denzel Washington.”98 Television critic Herman Gray has likewise equated the adoption of an educated, polished style with the “containment” of authentic, critical blackness, as if blackness should be exemplified in only one coherent set of cultural practices.⁹⁹ Both of these perspectives are tainted by the racist assumption that a musician’s style and politics should be determined by skin color. Certainly, Anderson did not challenge Americans’ views about social class or about the superiority of art music over other genres, and if her gentle criticism unsettled some viewers’ racial prejudices, it did not disturb most of those who wrote letters to CBS. Yet she moved the American TV audience profoundly—enough so that many stayed up late after the 11 p.m. close of the program to write their fan letters, poured out their hopes for their country after watching a mere TV show, and claimed her as their representative. Anderson’s case suggests that African American celebrities who had broad appeal played an important role in winning over their fellow Americans to the cause of civil rights. Armstrong, too, knew this role well: his wife, Lucille, reported that “he talked politics with me and he was aware that every word he said had impact.”¹⁰⁰

The role of prominent black celebrities abroad, of course, was different from their role at home. On their tours these ambassadors were to demonstrate that African Americans were not held back by prejudice and that they were able to achieve great things.¹⁰¹ These celebrities served as the cornerstone of the USIA’s race propaganda strategy in the 1950s—a strategy that was transparent to foreign audiences. Just before Anderson’s tour took her to Manila, the Manila Chronicle disparaged the emphasis on “exceptional” African Americans such as Anderson: “The official glorification of a Marian Anderson or a Richard Wright hardly proves anything. Men and women of whatever race or color who have attained excellence in their chosen fields cannot be ignored even in so arid a region as the American South. What must be shown is what is being done to save the millions of colored Jacks and Janes from the score or so of Governor Faubuses.”¹⁰²

Yet after Anderson’s visit the same newspaper praised her and proclaimed her effectiveness: “Bringing Miss Anderson and her voice to our part of the world is making up for Orval Faubus. He is the barbarian and . . . a rustic disgrace, because the real America, as well as the rest of the good world, hails Marian Anderson.”103 Although the strategy for presenting African Americans abroad was transparent, it was not necessarily ineffective. The PAO who witnessed Armstrong’s appearances in Montevideo reported this: “The papers here had carried Armstrong’s statement [about the government going to hell] and then the later one commending Eisenhower for sending in federal troops. The people here seemed to believe that since Armstrong did come here and since he has indicated a willingness to go to Russia he now feels that the government is giving the Negroes a fair shake.”¹⁰⁴ The very willingness of an African American musician to represent the U.S. government could be understood abroad as an implicit endorsement. Observers in foreign lands were cast as judges: they paid attention to what these musicians might be representing, and they evaluated carefully what the act of representation meant.

In foreign lands the critical outspokenness of eminent African Americans was valuable both as a demonstration of freedom of speech and as an emblem of truthfulness. Citizens of other countries could rely on what was conveyed through the American press as a “true” account precisely because some of it was negative. Both Armstrong and Anderson also showed considerable restraint, attending carefully to the time and place of their remarks, moderating their comments when abroad, speaking out at home when they believed it was appropriate or necessary to do so. Toni Morrison has noted that when African Americans tell about their experiences, they typically draw a veil over the worst parts in order to avoid losing support by offending popular taste. In a similar vein African American ambassadors’ discretion in commenting about race came across abroad as a genuine expression of love for their native country.¹⁰⁵ This role, carried out for weeks or months at a time, was extremely demanding. In a rare candid moment Anderson wrote to her manager, Sol Hurok: “I was told beforehand that this tour would be strenuous but I do not believe that anyone realized how strenuous. For, the world situation being what it is, there were things required of me as a Negro, as a representative of my people, that would not be required of someone else.”¹⁰⁶

Despite the cost, these ambassadors embodied support of the U.S. government and the United States as a nation. The New York Times reported about Armstrong during his Latin American tour: “Asked about opportunities for Negroes in the States, Mr. Armstrong said, ‘I’ll say they’re greater there than in any place in the world and you can say that again. Times are changing.’”¹⁰⁷ In Anderson’s interview in India she reaffirmed her patriotism: “The fact that we were able to come over for the State Department, and are thrilled beyond words with the honor and the opportunity, gives us . . . an opportunity to speak for the only land that we know. . . . My land and my country and my allegiance is with America.” Yet within this same interview her national feeling remained inseparable from her insistence on civil rights: “As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down—so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise. Therefore, regardless of how small the Negro may be in whatever area, the whole of our nation is dependent on what is done for the little fellow, dependent sometimes on his very life.”108

The mix of rhetorical strategies Anderson and Armstrong used—their open criticism and their diplomatic restraint—supported American propaganda goals but also kept the subject of race close to the center of attention.¹⁰⁹ These musicians understood the power of their public roles as ambassadors, and they judiciously used that power to advance the interests of the United States and African Americans alike. In the civil rights era, as people abroad tried to make sense of conflicting messages from the Soviet Union and the United States regarding race relations, what Armstrong and Anderson said, what they represented, and what they were seen to represent may have been as important as their musical appeal. Critical outspokenness and patriotic discretion were necessary, truthful, and appropriate aspects of the African American experience to present abroad, and these facets of Armstrong’s and Anderson’s performances were admired everywhere. It is at home, in the eyes of the American public, that the differences between the two musicians appeared most acute. By contrast to Armstrong’s most radical words, Anderson’s were almost too easy for Americans to accept. But despite the American public’s perceptions, both Armstrong and Anderson were “real ambassadors”—both for the United States abroad and for civil rights at home.