Jelly Roll Morton’s Denial of His Black Heritage

About Hilary De Vries’ March 3 cover story on playwright George C. Wolfe’s “Jelly’s Last Jam”:

De Vries emphasizes jazz great Jelly Roll Morton’s denial of his black heritage.

I wonder if this is also Wolfe’s main issue in writing this play. Can it be that “Jelly’s Last Jam” is a smug 1990s critique of the lifestyle of a great artist of the 1920s and ‘30s? That would be a shame.

When De Vries and Wolfe discuss Morton’s racial identification, they fail to mention the context out of which he came. Born in New Orleans in 1890, he came into this world just in time to catch the effects of the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision (1896), which established legalized segregation.

Hommere Plessy was a New Orleans creole who, like many of his brethren, fought against “black/white” classification. As we know, he lost.

I am not surprised that Morton would have rejected a label that he knew would be used to harm him. Whatever his motives, I am not in a position to judge the compromises he made. As beneficiaries of civil rights advances, we have not often been put in a position where we’ve had to make those kinds of choices; we simply don’t know his trouble.

I agree with Wolfe that we have to “figure out ways to celebrate people that cleared the resistence” for our accomplishments. I want to celebrate Jelly Roll for what he would not compromise: his individuality and his artistic integrity. I look forward to seeing “Jelly’s Last Jam” with the hope that Wolfe celebrates the same.

MICHELE C. MARTINEZ

Los Angeles