Blog Post #4

             In the book, Country Soul, Charles Hughes showed the unique relationship between music and race in the American South. Specifically, Hughes addressed the history of Memphis, Tennessee and how it both propelled and reflected the dynamic between music and race found within the civil rights struggle throughout the United States. The popularity and success of the Memphis sound was from its blend of country, blues, gospel, and R&B. Also, the Memphis sound consisted of a notion of promised integration. According to Hughes, Stax Records and other southern studios were presented “as racially harmonious sites of collaboration that confirmed the success of the national civil rights movement and offered a redemptive vision of white southernness that contrasted the contemporaneous stories of regional hostility” (46). In the early 1960’s, Stax was considered to be a utopia for freedom because both African American musicians and white musicians were able to work together and create music in an integrated space. Also, Stax positively embraced and promoted the concept of colorblindness; therefore, it got a reputation for creating a “sign of social progress” for the music industry in the South (46). However, while Stax was considered an integrated space, where African American musicians and white musicians were able to collaborate, outside the recording studio the rest of the South was still segregated because of Jim Crow during the 1960’s. Hughes argued that the colorblindness found within Stax inaccurately represented the racial politics of the South and presented a false reality of the civil rights movement. Ultimately, the oversimplification of the Stax story in Memphis civil rights made the Black Power movement become viewed as the downfall to the race-less and colorblindness previously found in the recording studio and caused an over-celebration of the white people in Memphis music being redeemed and progressive figures of change. Also, the oversimplification proved to be an example of opportunity lost for African Americans. Early colorblindness had two implications on the civil rights movement in Memphis. The first was the supposed freedom and lack of racial tensions in Memphis during the early 1960’s and the second was the suggestion that racial tensions turned bad because of the Black Power Movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1960’s. Hughes pointed out there was a historical lie people had come to accept about the civil rights movement in Memphis, which was blacks and whites got along in Memphis until non-southerners or agitators came in and changed racial tensions.