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Without spoiling too much about the plot for those who haven't read, at numerous points relationships between people of color and whites come into question, for example the narrators parents being of different races, and even the narrator who finds himself later involved with a white woman. What is important to note in these events is that they took place in the context of anti-miscegenation laws (race mixing) which had very harsh penalties for those who broke them, often including lynching of the non-white person involved. This link provides a historical outline of these laws and how they came into being.

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Centuries before the same-sex marriage movement, the U.S. government, its constituent states, and their colonial predecessors tackled the controversial issue of " miscegenation": race-mixing. It's widely known that the Deep South banned interracial marriages until 1967, but less widely known that many other states did the same (California until 1948, for example) -- or that three brazen attempts were made to ban interracial marriages nationally by amending the U.S. Constitution.

Maryland passes the first British colonial law banning marriage between whites and slaves -- a law that, among other things, orders the enslavement of white women who have married black men:

"[F]orasmuch as diverse freeborn English women forgetful of their free condition and to the disgrace of our Nation do intermarry with Negro slaves by which also diverse suits may arise touching the [children] of such women and a great damage doth befall the Masters of such Negroes for prevention whereof for deterring such freeborn women from such shameful matches,

"Be it further enacted by the authority advice and consent aforesaid that whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave from and after the last day of this present Assembly shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband, and that the [children] of such freeborn women so married shall be slaves as their fathers were. And be it further enacted that all the [children] of English or other freeborn women that have already married Negroes shall serve the masters of their parents til they be thirty years of age and no longer."

This leaves unaddressed two important questions:

1. This law draws no distinction between slaves and free blacks, and

2. This law doesn't say what happens to white men who marry black women, rather than vice versa.

As you might imagine, the white nationalist colonial governments did not leave these questions unanswered for long.

The Commonwealth of Virginia bans all interracial marriages, threatening to exile whites who marry people of color. In the 17th century, exile usually functioned as a death sentence:

"For prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious [children] which hereafter may increase in this dominion, as well as by negroes, mulattos, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women, as by their unlawful accompanying with one another,

"Be it enacted ... that ... whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free, shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever ...

"And be it further enacted ... that if any English woman being free shall have a bastard child by any negro or mulatto, she pay the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, within one month after such bastard child shall be born, to the Church wardens of the parish ... and in default of such payment she shall be taken into the possession of the said Church wardens and disposed of for five years, and the said fine of fifteen pounds, or whatever the woman shall be disposed of for, shall be paid, one third part to their majesties ... and one other third part to the use of the parish ... and the other third part to the informer, and that such bastard child be bound out as a servant by the said Church wardens until he or she shall attain the age of thirty yeares, and in case such English woman that shall have such bastard child be a servant, she shall be sold by the said church wardens (after her time is expired that she ought by law serve her master), for five years, and the money she shall be sold for divided as if before appointed, and the child to serve as aforesaid."

Leaders in Maryland's colonial government liked this idea so much that they implemented a similar policy a year later. And in 1705, Virginia expanded the policy to impose massive fines on any minister who performs a marriage between a person of color and a white person -- with half the amount (ten thousand pounds) to be paid to the informant.

In Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that state-level bans on interracial marriage do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling will hold for more than 80 years.

The plaintiffs, Tony Pace and Mary Cox, were arrested under Alabama's Section 4189, which read:

"[I]f any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more than seven years."

They challenged the conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Johnson Field wrote for the Court:

"The counsel is undoubtedly correct in his view of the purpose of the clause of the amendment in question, that it was to prevent hostile and discriminating state legislation against any person or class of persons. Equality of protection under the laws implies not only accessibility by each one, whatever his race, on the same terms with others to the courts of the country for the security of his person and property, but that in the administration of criminal justice he shall not be subjected, for the same offense, to any greater or different punishment ...

"The defect in the argument of counsel consists in his assumption that any discrimination is made by the laws of Alabama in the punishment provided for the offense for which the plaintiff in error was indicted when committed by a person of the African race and when committed by a white person ... Section 4189 applies the same punishment to both offenders, the white and the black. Indeed, the offense against which this latter section is aimed cannot be committed without involving the persons of both races in the same punishment. Whatever discrimination is made in the punishment prescribed in the two sections is directed against the offense designated and not against the person of any particular color or race. The punishment of each offending person, whether white or black, is the same."

More than a century later, opponents of same-sex marriage will resurrect the same argument in claiming that heterosexual-only marriage laws don't discriminate on the basis of sex since they technically punish men and women on equal terms.

Rep. Seaborn Roddenbery (D-GA) makes a second attempt to revise the U.S. Constitution in order to ban interracial marriage in all 50 states.

Roddenbery's proposed amendment read as follows:

"That intermarriage between negroes or persons of color and Caucasians or any other character of persons within the United States or any territory under their jurisdiction, is forever prohibited; and the term 'negro or person of color,' as here employed, shall be held to mean any and all persons of African descent or having any trace of African or negro blood."

Later theories of physical anthropology will suggest that every human being has some African ancestry, which could have rendered this amendment unenforceable had it passed. In any case, it didn't pass.

Congress passes the Cable Act.

While most anti-miscegenation laws primarily targeted interracial marriages between whites and African Americans or whites and American Indians, the climate of anti-Asian xenophobia that defined the early decades of the 20th century meant that Asian Americans were also targeted. In this case, the Cable Act retroactively stripped the citizenship of any U.S. citizen who married "an alien ineligible for citizenship," which -- under the racial quota system of the time -- primarily meant Asian Americans.

The impact of this law was not merely theoretical. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Thind that Asian Americans are not white and therefore cannot legally become citizens, the U.S. government revoked the citizenship of natural-born U.S. citizens such as Mary Keatinge Das, wife of the Pakistani-American activist Taraknath Das, and Emily Chinn, mother of four and wife of a Chinese-American immigrant.

Traces of anti-Asian immigration law remained until the passage of the ​ Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, though some Republican politicians, most famously Michele Bachmann, have suggested a return to the earlier racial quota standard.

In McLaughlin v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that laws banning interracial sex violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

McLaughlin struck down Florida Statute 798.05, which read:

"Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars."

While the ruling did not directly address laws banning interracial marriage, it laid down the groundwork for a ruling that definitively did.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturns Pace v. Alabama (1883), ruling in Loving v. Virginia that state bans on interracial marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the Court:

"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy ...

"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

From this point on, interracial marriage is legal throughout the United States.

Following a November 7th ballot referendum, Alabama becomes the last state to officially legalize interracial marriage.

By November 2000, interracial marriage had been legal in every state for more than three decades thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in (1967) -- but the Alabama State Constitution still contained an unenforceable ban in Section 102:

"The legislature shall never pass any law to authorise or legalise any marriage between any white person and a Negro or descendant of a Negro."

The Alabama State Legislature stubbornly clung to the old language as a symbolic statement of the state's views on interracial marriage; as recently as 1998, House leaders successfully killed attempts to remove Section 102.

When voters finally had the opportunity to remove the language, the outcome was surprisingly close: although 59% of voters supported removing the language, 41% favored keeping it. Interracial marriage remains controversial in the Deep South, where a 2011 poll found that a plurality of Mississippi Republicans still supports anti-miscegenation laws.

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How Interracial Marriage Laws Have Changed Since the 1600s

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Centuries before the same-sex marriage movement, the U.S. government, its constituent states, and their colonial predecessors tackled the controversial issue of " miscegenation": race-mixing. It's widely known that the Deep South banned interracial marriages until 1967, but less widely known that many other states did the same (California until 1948, for example) -- or that three brazen attempts were made to ban interracial marriages nationally by amending the U.S.

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The narrator alongside being an avid reader, is a talented musician. During many of his travels detailed in the novel, he becomes exposed to the Ragtime music scene. The attached link details the history of ragtime as a genre, and its uniquely American context.

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The Ragtime Nightmare by Tom Turpin (St. Louis, MO: Robt. DeYoung & Co., 1900). Performing Arts Reading Room, Library of Congress.

Ragtime, a uniquely American, syncopated musical phenomenon, has been a strong presence in musical composition, entertainment, and scholarship for over a century. It emerged in its published form during the mid-1890s and quickly spread across the continent via published compositions. By the early 1900s ragtime flooded the music publishing industry. The popularity and demand for ragtime also boosted sale of pianos and greatly swelled the ranks of the recording industry. Ragtime seemed to emanate primarily from the southern and midwestern states with the majority of activity occurring in Missouri -- although the East and West coasts also had their share of composers and performers. Ragtime's popularity promptly spread to Europe and there, as in America, soon became a fad.

It is not easy to define ragtime. Like jazz, another distinctly American musical art form, ragtime's composers, practitioners, and admirers each see its boundaries differently. However, these groups are distinguished by subgroups of purists who generally agree on, and stand by, a precise definition:

Ragtime -- A genre of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a highly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass. A ragtime composition is usually composed three or four contrasting sections or strains, each one being 16 or 32 measures in length.

This definition describes much of the music of the itinerant pianists who traversed the South and Midwest and eventually congregated in Missouri to produce an oeuvre of core ragtime compositions. These roving composers include Scott Joplin, Charles Hunter, Thomas Turpin, Louis Chauvin, Charles L. Johnson, and many others.

Some ragtime scholars point out that ragtime is composed chiefly for an audience -- a pianistic work not meant for dancing. It is a genre distinct from other types of syncopated musical compositions from about the same period -- for example, "coon songs" and cakewalks -- the latter especially composed for dancing.

But our definition cannot be cut-and-dried, for "ragtime" once described the peppy, syncopated treatment of almost any type of music -- that is how it was known to the public at large. Ragtime became a very real fad that covered a wide range of styles and even grew to describe things non-musical. Much like rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, jazz, and other popular genres of music, ragtime invited "the curiosity and even devotion of the young at the same time it disquiets the staid and established ... ragtime created an attitude and defined an era that reached beyond the music." ( Real Ragtime booklet, 4)

Ragtime, the word, probably began life as a description of musical meter and certainly preceded the advent of the music of Joplin, Scott, and others. It was part of the late 19th century-lexicon to use "-time" as a suffix to describe a kind of music by the characteristics of its rhythm. For instance, waltzes were referred to as being "in waltz-time." "March-time" and "jig-time" also described the meter, basic rhythm, and function of style. Almost certainly, however, the term is a contraction for "ragged time," denoting a style of playing piano or banjo where the melody is "broken up" into short, syncopated rhythms while a steady overall beat is either played (piano) or implied (banjo). Taking a simple, conventional, and unsyncopated melody and breaking up the rhythm was known as "ragging," therefore, the resulting music was said to be in "ragged time."

Americans were first exposed to ragtime, en masse, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. It is reported that some 27 million people passed through the Fair gates between May and October of that year. In 1896 "rag" and "rag time" were used to describe some newly published "coon songs," complete with outrageous parodies of black culture and speech. Among them was "All Coons Look Alike to Me," composed by black entertainer, Ernest Hogan. The second chorus offered a syncopated accompaniment, composed by Max Hoffman, along with the caption "Choice Chorus with Negro 'Rag' Accompaniment." Also during 1896, the cover of Ben Harney's song "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" featured a banner proclaiming "Original Introducer to the stage of the new popular 'Rag Time.'" The following year saw the first published piano rags beginning with W. H. Krell's "Mississippi Rag."

Syncopation -- The "Misplaced" Beat

Ragtime was both exciting and threatening to America's youth and staid polite society, respectively. The excitement came from syncopation--the displacing of the beat from its regular and assumed course of meter. Syncopation caused an individual to feel a propulsion, swing, and if played correctly, a musical looseness generally unknown to the public at large. The threat came from the very same displaced beat that evoked a strong connotation to the "low-class" Negro music found in brothels and saloons. The Midwest, particularly postbellum Missouri, was rife with saloons, brothels, and cabarets--all places where a pianist with a decent repertoire could earn a decent living.
The syncopated motif:
when counted in 2/4-time yields a feel of "short - long - short," (with a fourth sound added for definition), is the most common syncope found in ragtime. It comes from the cakewalk, a high-stepping dance popularized on the minstrel stage and which often served as the show's finale. Syncopations in the genre of piano ragtime are varied and intricate as well as simple.

This motif and more complex syncopations were commonly heard in "head" music (music played totally by ear) performed in the Caribbean, the southern states, and the Georgia Sea Islands. However, they are rarely found in published American music prior to the mid-1880s.

The complexities of non-written or "head syncopations" heard in rhythms of black slaves are addressed by music historian H. Wiley Hitchcock. He explains that the "...emphatic use of syncopation by American Negroes, partly derived from African drumming, partly derived from Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms." He then quotes from an 1835 letter to Edgar Allan Poe in which a friend describes a musical performance of some slaves in a practice known as "clapping Juba" ("Juba" is thought to refer to the English dance-name "jig.") The text is a remarkable testimony to the survival of syncopated elements in African drumming:

"There is no attempt to keep time to all the notes, but then it comes so pat & so distinct that the cadence is never lost. . . Such irregularities are like rests and grace notes. They must be so managed as neither to hasten or retard the beat. The time of the bar must be the same, no matter how many notes are in it." ( Music in the United States, 120)

Much of what became the key ingredients of ragtime came from self-taught and largely uneducated musicians: slaves; hill folk of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas; and minstrel-troupe musicians. The popularity and portability of the banjo, guitar, mandolin, and violin made these the instruments of choice for these itinerant musicians.

Banjo and Fiddle

It is not easy to tell when and where this lively, rhythmically propulsive music began, but it is possible to point to some very specific roots and to see it bear fruit. Though the evidence is not negligible, few contemporary writings chronicle the role that the banjo played in the development of ragtime. In a noteworthy comment made in 1881, the essayist Lafcadio Hearn wrote, "Did you ever hear negroes play the piano by ear?... They use the piano exactly like a banjo. It is good banjo-playing but no piano-playing." ( Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, 54, 58) In 1899 the music critic Rupert Hughes used the term "banjo figurations" to describe the piano ragtime that he had heard.

These peculiar rhythms and melodies had another source -- the fiddle music that British Isles immigrants played to folk dances such as the jig and reel. "Turkey in the Straw," also known as "Old Zip Coon," for example, is thought to be of Scottish origin. This string music reveals the origin of a commonly used rhythmic device in ragtime, known as "secondary rag" -- a simple, repeated, three-note motif that gives the listener a temporary off-center feeling by imposing an even pulse of three over a series of duple measures.

By the mid-1850s these ragged rhythms were finding their way into published banjo solos and methods. Much of this earlier published material came from the minstrel stage and was given an "Ethiopic" theme meant to evoke the plantation and the South. Not all Ethiopic themed music contained syncopation--quite a bit of it consisted of sentimental songs that evoked the themes of fondness for the South, the plantation, "Massa," and other aspects of slavery. But, syncopation rarely found its' way onto the printed page--a nod perhaps to the notion that it was difficult music to play unless you had an innate feeling for it.

The Heart of Ragtime

Missouri, located in the center of America, was the heartland of ragtime. As noted by popular music historians David Jasen and Gene Jones, "There were more rags--and more good rags--from Missouri than anywhere else." ( That American Rag, 1) Perhaps it was the robust pioneer spirit that thrived in Missouri that created the environment for music like ragtime to flourish.

"...Missouri was destined by its location to be an area of commercial, social, and cultural change. Since the early nineteenth century, St. Louis has served as midpoint and stopover for north-south traffic on our largest river, and when going west was a national imperative, the city was the 'Gateway to the West.'" ( TAR, 1)

During the 1880s, black entrepreneurs prospered in the sporting district of St. Louis, known as Chestnut Valley. John L. Turpin, a black businessman from Savannah, Georgia, made St. Louis his home in 1887 and opened a saloon called the Silver Dollar.

Turpin's teenage son, Tom, followed closely in his father's footsteps and by 1897 had opened his first saloon. That same year, young Turpin, also a self-taught pianist, had his composition "Harlem Rag" published by a local lawyer. "Harlem Rag" was a defining piece of piano ragtime and a model for its composers.

By 1900 Tom Turpin had acquired sufficient capital to open a new saloon and brothel, the Rosebud. His two young protégés, Joe Jordan and Louis Chauvin, frequented the establishment. With the constant rollicking, buoyant sound of ragtime, Turpin, Jordan, Chauvin, and many other enthusiastic proponents of the new music, made the Rosebud and St. Louis the capital of ragtime.

The regular flow of traffic through St. Louis and the rest of the state created a demand for accommodations and amenities for travelers. "As Missouri gentrified it became a state where a piano player could make a good living." ( TAR, 2) As their salaries usually were nominal, the nomadic pianists made their best money from tips provided by the patrons of the many saloons and brothels that employed them.

It should be noted that when their music was eventually published, however, their royalties, although welcomed, were insignificant. About a dozen brave publishers risked putting some of this engaging, new music on sale to the public.

The most influential and memorable publisher was John Stark, a Civil War veteran and peripatetic ice cream salesman who loved music. He settled in Sedalia in 1886, opened a music store, and eventually turned to publishing. Stark met Scott Joplin in 1899 when the latter came into Stark's store to demonstrate his still unpublished "Maple Leaf Rag." Although Stark was impressed by the musicality of the piece, the technical difficulty of the piece led him to question its salability.

After some encouragement from his son, John Stark agreed to publish "Maple Leaf Rag" thus beginning a profitable business relationship for himself and Joplin and insuring immortality for ragtime. By 1914 "Maple Leaf Rag" had sold 1 million copies and Stark had amassed over 50 rags in his catalog.

In addition to Joplin, Stark's stable of ragtime composers included James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Artie Mathews, J. Russell Robinson, and others. Stark's original assessment and question about ragtime became a reality--it was delightful to the ear and heart although difficult to perform. He came to refer to the rag selections in his catalog as "classic rags." Composed by musicians of very high standards, they required a refined pianistic ability to perform them correctly. As a result, most of the "classic rags" were not bestsellers.

Missouri was also home to composer Arthur Pryor, who was born in St. Joseph in or around 1870. Pryor grew up playing in his father's band. Best known as a trombonist, Pryor wrote some of the most successful ragtime selections of the era. Some of his better-known rag titles are: "A Coon Band Contest," "Razzazza Mazzazza," "That Flying Rag," and "Frozen Bill." Although these compositions were published as piano solos, they achieved greater fame as band selections.

As assistant conductor and solo trombonist for the famous band of John Philip Sousa, Arthur Pryor helped spread the ragtime craze to Europe when the Sousa band toured there in 1900. Not only did he compose most of the band's ragtime material, but he also taught the Sousa musicians how to play the syncopations in a relaxed, unhurried way--the way that he heard it back in Missouri.

The Sound of Ragtime

By the early 1890s Americans had become infatuated with the multi-strained "March and two-step," which was basically the same as a march. Always in 2/4 or 6/8 meter, there was something stirring and optimistic about these pieces. Both meters yield a "two feel," but 6/8 has its intrinsic triple feel that creates a far-reaching swing. In fact, 6/8 two-steps were often referred to as "swings" as were the steps danced to them.

The ragtime compositions by Joplin and his circle were solely in duple meter and had a different sort of swing to them. A 6/8 two-step encouraged a more aerobic style of dance due to its broad swing. Ragtime's syncopations within the measure (and often over the measure), however, led to smaller and more gyrating dance steps, resulting in a series of popular "animal" dances such as the grizzly bear, bunny hug, turkey trot, and others.

Syncopation in ragtime was varied and more complex than the simple cakewalk. The syncopated rhythms found in the best rags were meant to evoke a looseness, natural flow, and drive recreated by reading and performing the music exactly as written. If performed correctly, the effect of the syncopation against the steady duple meter bass created an air of excitement and spontaneity not inherently found in most published music of the time.

The Fad

Ragtime was everywhere by the early 1900s--in sheet music, piano rolls, phonograph records, and ragtime piano playing contests, as well as in music boxes, vaudeville theaters, and bordellos. Publishing houses churned out piano rags and ragtime songs at a furious pace. Ragtime also appeared in arrangements for orchestras and wind bands. The majority of this music was the popular sort of ragtime that was cranked out mostly by Tin Pan Alley hacks. As with all types of music, there is always a bigger market for a less subtle, more digestible version of the original, more complicated, form.

The overabundance and popularity of ragtime was not always met with enthusiasm. For example, at the 1901 convention of the American Federation of Musicians in Denver, "Resolutions were adopted characterizing 'ragtime' as 'unmusical rot.' Members were encouraged to 'make every effort to suppress and [to] discourage the playing and the publishing of such musical trash." ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5/14/01, 1)

Similarly, at a 1902 meeting of the Lincoln Women's Relief Corps, a motion was made by the Grand Army Encampment of Music chairman E. B. Hay, that the bands in the Corps' "great parade be allowed to play 'Ragtime,' to break up the monotony of patriotic and martial airs..." The motion was met with great indignation, noting it "sacrilege to require Civil War veterans to march along Pennsylvania Avenue to 'ragtime' strains." ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 8/11/02, 11)

The press overreacted about ragtime eroding mores. In January 1900 the music monthly The Etude, in a piece entitled "Musical Impurity" noted: "The counters of the music stores are loaded with this virulent poison which in the form of a malarious epidemic, is finding its way into the homes and brains of the youth to such an extent as to arouse one's suspicions of their sanity." It went on to describe the melodic rhythm of ragtime as "double-jointed jumping jack airs that fairly twist the ears of an educated musician from their anchorage."

The Fad Fades

"Ragtime" as a catchall name for syncopated popular music remained popular through the 1910s. Ragtime's popularity faded around 1917 with the rise of another catchall term--"jazz"--used to describe peppy, noisy, popular music. Note that musicians active in New Orleans during the early 1900s who were later recognized as "jazz musicians" frequently, if not always, referred to the hot music they played as "ragtime."

It can be stated categorically, however, that the ragtime music of Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott, and others had become nearly forgotten by 1920. Joseph Lamb's own daughter did not find out that her father was a well-known composer of ragtime until the dawn of his comeback during the 1950s. Ragtime did not disappear, nor was it "replaced" by jazz. However, it seems to have been supplanted by the novelty piano style that was ironically based on many of the traits found in ragtime--traits that had become anachronistic by 1920.

Novelty and Stride Piano

The technical demands of playing the works of Joplin, et al., are not inconsiderable. Their music demanded technique as a means to expression. What remained in the public's ear by 1920 were the virtuosic, technical aspects of piano ragtime. The genre was known as "novelty piano" -- often referred to today as "novelty ragtime."

Ragtime scholar Ed Berlin points out that "novelty piano" is a latter-day term that was never used by its composers. ( Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 162) Nonetheless, it sprang out of a parody on the sound of ragtime played perhaps too fast--replete with wrong notes, humorous harmonic effects, the already clichéd secondary rag, and even the sound of a player piano slightly out of adjustment.

Novelty piano is not a disrespectful or nonmusical art. On the contrary, it incorporates both technique as a means to itself and the harmonic devices found in older classical piano music. The first hit of this genre, "Kitten on the Keys," appeared in July 1921. Composed by Elzear "Zez" Confrey (1895-1971), the piece was filled with tricky syncopations, unusual harmonic devices (such as strings of augmented chords, whole tone runs, parallel fourths) that somehow gave the listener the impression of humorously played wrong notes, and sudden shifts of key. Despite being difficult to play, "Kitten on the Keys" sold 1 million copies during its first year of publication. ( Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 215)

Similarly, stride piano, which developed in and around Harlem, New York, during the 1910s by primarily black pianists, was never referred to as ragtime. Nonetheless, its composers and performers--such as James P. Johnson, Thomas "Fats" Waller, C. Luckyeth "Lucky" Roberts, and others were certainly well acquainted with ragtime and used its components as a point of departure.

The strong kinship among stride, novelty, and ragtime was the fact that all three were usually composed as multi-strained pieces. They were also pianistically conceived and were not meant for dancing. Both novelty and stride piano are typically performed at ragtime festivals today.

Ragtime Returns

Although ragtime was not a big attraction during the 1930s and 1940s, it was still played, and not just by pianists. Oftentimes a dance band recorded an up-to-date swing version of "Maple Leaf Rag." But more often than not, ragtime, when offered, would be played as quaint nostalgia with its characteristics parodied.

But ragtime also had advocates--its composers, practitioners, and admirers. Of latter, Rudi Blesh was greatly responsible for re-popularizing ragtime. Blesh, a student of art, architecture, and early jazz, came to New York from Berkeley, California, in 1945, while writing a book about the history of jazz. He and his colleague and companion, Harriet Janis, began Circle Records shortly thereafter.

Circle was the first record label to issue recordings from Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 recordings made at the Library of Congress. These recordings prompted much enthusiasm about early jazz styles and ragtime. Circle Records also issued a 3-disc album by jazz clarinetist Tony Parenti and his "Ragtimers," an ad-hoc jazz band playing ragtime based loosely on old stock arrangements. The album included Joplin's "Swipesy Cake Walk" and James Scott's "Grace and Beauty." The combination of these jazzmen's sensibilities combined with the formality of the old written arrangements yielded outstanding results.

Blesh and Janis set about researching ragtime in earnest. Their monumental book They All Played Ragtime was published in 1950.

During the 1950s ragtime was the theme of many record albums, but usually was treated as a caricature. Ragtime was frequently played on pianos especially rigged to sound out of tune or perhaps with thumbtacks in the hammers to evoke the sound of old-time saloon pianos. Despite such comical treatments, ragtime began to be heard with more frequency and respect than it had been in three decades. In 1959 and 1960 Max Morath, a talented pianist and entertainer who had some experience directing in television, produced a successful 12-part program entitled "The Ragtime Years" for National Educational Television. Since then, Max Morath and ragtime have become inextricably linked in the public's mind.

The 1968 Columbia Records release of "The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake" was another milestone in the comeback of ragtime. Blake, a skilled composer and pianist was also one of the creators of the 1921 show "Shuffle Along" an important and ground breaking all-black music revue. As a child Blake studied piano formally at home in Baltimore. But he used to sneak out at night to hear the pianists in the low-down saloons nearby.

Blake's wide range of musical endeavors (including an ever-growing classical technique) led him to become familiar, even expert in ragtime. He ultimately composed a number of fine rags himself. As his 1968 recording shows, he was a vastly entertaining, vital performer--dexterous of hand and quick-witted.

Blake swiftly found a new career--traveling the world and appearing on the concert stage. He also was a frequent guest on late-night television talk shows, where he was always introduced to the millions viewers as a ragtime pianist.

In 1970 ragtime experienced a huge renaissance. Nonesuch Records was the first classical label to issue an album of ragtime; "Piano Rags by Scott Joplin," performed by composer, conductor, and musicologist Joshua Rifkin, created a sensation and quickly became a bestseller. Rifkin's approach was that of a classical pianist. At the same time he was respectful of the low-down element as well without resorting to any type of caricature. His playing of Joplin exhibited an understanding of the inherent swing and looseness that these pieces were meant to evoke. The first album was a remarkable success and was quickly followed by two more volumes.

The 1974 motion picture "The Sting" introduced the widest audience yet to the music of Scott Joplin. Although the choice of Joplin's music for a story set in the 1930s was historically inaccurate, the music underscored and supported the action on the screen perfectly. As a result, Joplin's "The Entertainer" went to the top of the pop record charts.

In 1972, Scott Joplin's ragtime-infused opera, Treemonisha, was revived. Joplin spent the last years of his life struggling to find a producer for his opera. He managed only to have it twice performed, once staged, and once done as a read-through. Joplin died in 1917, broken by the struggle. However, Treemonisha was later accorded its due--in 1976, it earned a special Pulitzer Prize and in 1983, a postage stamp was issued bearing Joplin's likeness.

Since the 1970s and the renaissance of ragtime there has been a great deal of activity in the areas of live performance, festivals, and scholarship in the field. Public radio has featured several series devoted to ragtime such as Terry Waldo's "This is Ragtime" and Galen Wilke's "It's Rag Time!" Talented composers such as Trebor Tichenor, David Thomas Roberts, Scott Kirby, and many others have made lasting contributions to the ragtime repertoire. There are ragtime organizations throughout the nation such as The Classic Ragtime Society of Indiana, The Northern Virginia Ragtime Society, The Sacramento Ragtime Society, and many others. There is even a ragtime-influenced fusion style called "terre verde" for which some contemporary ragtimers are actively composing and performing.

There have also been great advances in ragtime scholarship. Many fine books about ragtime have been published and there have been numerous theses and dissertations written on the subject.

Ragtime, like any other music, must be heard and really cannot be defined by words--just as words cannot be defined by music. But through more than 100 years, ragtime has had no trouble making its presence known and its composers, performers, and admirers all look forward to its future.

Bibliography
Books:
Berlin, Ed. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.

Berlin, Ed. Reflections and Research on Ragtime. New York: Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College, 1987.

Jasen, David, and Gene Jones. That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast. New York: Schirmer, 2000.

Jasen, David A., and Trebor Jay Tichenor. Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History. New York: The Seabury Press, 1978.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Hasse, John Edward, ed. Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music. New York: Schirmer, 1985.
Periodicals and Newspapers:
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. May 14, 1901:1.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. August 11, 1902:11.

"Musical Impurity." Etude 18 (January 1900): 16.
Recordings: Compact Discs:
"Real Ragtime: Disc Recordings from its Heyday" (Booklet notes by Richard Martin and David Sager). Archeophone Records, Arch. 1001A.

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Ragtime, a uniquely American, syncopated musical phenomenon, has been a strong presence in musical composition, entertainment, and scholarship for over a century. It emerged in its published form during the mid-1890s and quickly spread across the continent via published compositions. By the early 1900s ragtime flooded the music publishing industry.

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The Harlem renaissance was the rapid expansion of African American culture, arts, and literary work from 1918-37, and it produced much of the literary heritage from which later civil rights leaders would be influenced. The author, James Weldon Johnson, was a profound contributor to the Harlem renaissance, and many of his ideas, and the ideas of other renaissance writer's such as W.E.B. Dubois end up being explored in this novel. This link gives a good overview of the Harlem Renaissance, and some of the important figures involved in the event.

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Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming (c. 1918-37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize "the Negro" apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced Black peoples' relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent Black literature and consciousness worldwide. While the renaissance was not confined to the Harlem district of New York City, Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of intellect and talent and served as the symbolic capital of this cultural awakening.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)

The background

The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that had emerged in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of African Americans from rural to urban spaces and from South to North; dramatically rising levels of literacy; the creation of national organizations dedicated to pressing African American civil rights, "uplifting" the race, and opening socioeconomic opportunities; and developing race pride, including pan-African sensibilities and programs. Black exiles and expatriates from the Caribbean and Africa crossed paths in metropoles such as New York City and Paris after World War I and had an invigorating influence on each other that gave the broader "Negro renaissance" (as it was then known) a profoundly important international cast.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
The Harlem Renaissance is unusual among literary and artistic movements for its close relationship to civil rights and reform organizations. Crucial to the movement were magazines such as The Crisis, published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Opportunity, published by the National Urban League; and The Messenger, a socialist journal eventually connected with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a Black labour union. Negro World, the newspaper of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, also played a role, but few of the major authors or artists identified with Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement, even if they contributed to the paper.

The renaissance had many sources in Black culture, primarily of the United States and the Caribbean, and manifested itself well beyond Harlem. As its symbolic capital, Harlem was a catalyst for artistic experimentation and a highly popular nightlife destination. Its location in the communications capital of North America helped give the "New Negroes" visibility and opportunities for publication not evident elsewhere. Located just north of Central Park, Harlem was a formerly white residential district that by the early 1920s was becoming virtually a Black city within the borough of Manhattan. Other boroughs of New York City were also home to people now identified with the renaissance, but they often crossed paths in Harlem or went to special events at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Black intellectuals from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities (where they had their own intellectual circles, theatres, and reading groups) also met in Harlem or settled there. New York City had an extraordinarily diverse and decentred Black social world in which no one group could monopolize cultural authority. As a result, it was a particularly fertile place for cultural experimentation.

While the renaissance built on earlier traditions of African American culture, it was profoundly affected by trends-such as primitivism-in European and white American artistic circles. Modernist primitivism was inspired partly by Freudian psychology, but it tended to extol "primitive" peoples as enjoying a more direct relationship to the natural world and to elemental human desires than "overcivilized" whites. The keys to artistic revolution and authentic expression, some intellectuals felt, would be found in the cultures of "primitive races," and preeminent among these, in the stereotypical thinking of the day, were the cultures of sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants. Early in the 20th century, European avant-garde artists had drawn inspiration from African masks as they broke from realistic representational styles toward abstraction in painting and sculpture. The prestige of such experiments caused African American intellectuals to look on their African heritage with new eyes and in many cases with a desire to reconnect with a heritage long despised or misunderstood by both whites and Blacks.

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Harlem Renaissance | Definition, Artists, Writers, Poems, Literature, & Facts

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Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming (c. 1918-37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Learn more about the Harlem Renaissance, including its noteworthy works and artists, in this article.

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The novel takes place in the period following reconstruction, in an America intensely gripped by racial segregation and Jim Crow Laws. These laws were the status quo for Black Americans living in the South during this time, and were instituted to maintain white legal supremacy. Understanding these laws, and specifically what end those who dared to challenge them met, is vital to understanding numerous events in the novel, and how those events relate to the color line.

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Jim Crow Laws - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Jim Crow Laws, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Throughout the novel, the narrator encounters moments in which he is made to present himself as a white man. While his reasons for either choosing to pass or not differ throughout the novel, the implications that go along with hiding one's racial identity have a profound affect. The narrator himself struggles with this decision to the very end of the novel. This attached link is to an NPR article about very similar experiences of Black Americans who made a similar decision as the narrator, providing some incredibly useful non-fiction sources to better our understanding of the novel.

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‘A Chosen Exile’: Black People Passing In White America

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From the time of slavery, some light-skinned African-Americans escaped racism by passing as white. The new book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, explores what they lost.

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Perhaps the largest theme touched upon in the novel is that of the color line. The narrator is a man who do to his physical appearance, traverses this line and its criteria throughout his accounts in the novel, and understanding what that line is, is vital to grasp what the novel is trying to communicate. The link and attached PDF article, discuss the origin of the term from W.E.B. Du Bois, and explore its implications today.

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IN 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." Forty years later...

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In the novel, there is a very graphic scene where the narrator witnesses a lynching. Lynchings were a huge part of the reality in the South at the time of this novel. Understanding their nature both as a horrific crime, but also as a purposeful reiteration of the status quo is important to grasp the message being communicated in the novel. This website gives an incredibly detailed account of lynchings in America, as well as witness accounts and testimonials.

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ListenAudio stories from generations affected by lynching.

WatchA film exploring one family's painful past and journey south.

ExploreInteractive maps on the impact of lynching.

Learn MoreJoin our efforts to fight racial injustice today.

The ReportThe full report with additional research and materials for educators.

AboutMore about the project and the Equal Justice Initiative.

Strange Fruit

This site features painful stories of America's history of racial injustice. In order to heal the deep wounds of our present, we must face the truth of our past.

After slavery was formally abolished, lynching emerged as a vicious tool of racial control to reestablish white supremacy and suppress Black civil rights. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched across twenty states between 1877 and 1950.

These lynchings were public acts of racial terrorism, intended to instill fear in entire Black communities. Government officials frequently turned a blind eye or condoned the mob violence.

The effects of racial terror lynchings are still felt today.

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Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

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ListenAudio stories from generations affected by lynching. WatchA film exploring one family's painful past and journey south. ExploreInteractive maps on the impact of lynching. Learn MoreJoin our efforts to fight racial injustice today. The ReportThe full report with additional research and materials for educators. AboutMore about the project and the Equal Justice Initiative.

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James Weldon Johnson, born in 1871, was an author, lawyer, and civil rights activist who heavily influenced the Harlem Renaissance, and was first executive secretary for the NAACP. He wrote the novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and this resource gives a succinct and helpful background of his life.

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James Weldon Johnson - Poet - James Weldon Johnson, born in Florida in 1871, was a national organizer for the NAACP and an author of poetry and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for the song "Lift Every Voice and SIng," he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition.