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Louis Armstrong, A Man Who Was The Most Influential Trumpet Players Of All Of Jazz Music Essay

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When we are faced with the question of which men and women in human history have overcome oppression to achieve great things, we often come up with names such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Teresa. What do all of those individuals have in common? During their lives, such individuals contributed greatly to social movements and encouraged society to be a more equal, open, and loving place. We often don’t think about people in other realms of society who have overcome oppression and have also changed facets of the society that we know today. One of these individuals is Louis Armstrong, aka Satchmo. Arguably one of the most influential trumpet players in all of Jazz music, Louis Armstrong appears to be a man who was able to accomplish fame with relative ease, when, in fact, Louis Armstrong faced many obstacles throughout his life that he had to overcome, before he was able to change the history of the music industry in our country. The society that Louis Armstrong was born into reflected extreme racial tensions and inequality that was present throughout the United States at the time, especially in the South. The combination of segregation following Plessy vs. Ferguson (rationale of “separate but equal”) and Jim Crow laws that were created to ensure that African Americans were able to exercise as few rights as possible created a very negative atmosphere for Louis Armstrong to grow up in, in terms of racial relations (Bergreen, 1997, p. 13). Growing up as an

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