History of Jazz, BlackFace Perfomers, and The Stock Market Crash

The origins of Jazz:

When i think of the word Jazz, the first thing that comes to mind is Saxophones and then New Orleans. so when doing research i was not surprised to find that it originated there in the early 1900's. Jazz music is a beautiful blend of Western European music of the time mixed with African American music and culture, including slavery songs and church hymns.

Blackface Performers:

With just hearing the words black face performers you can already assume that it is a racist act. Blackface performances became very popular during the 19th century. Since segregation was still a very large part of this era, white performers would modify their appearance to resemble African American. They would do so by applying dark makeup and exaggerate stereotypical feature, such as creating large lips (shown in the picture above). The performers would also try to portray African Americans with southern accents and 

Stock Market Crash:

Thinking about the stock market gives me a headache and makes me feel like that man in the image above. Its a foreign world to me that i will probably never understand. All i know about the crash of the stock market  weakened the economy and caused unemployment to go through the roof causing the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929. After research many different sites i still don't fully understand what caused the crash. What i do understand is that the 1920's was a time of excess and wealth. No one could have ever guessed that such an economic tragedy could have occurred during a time with such great prosperity. Many people had invested their life savings into stocks. Once the prices began to fall people panicked and began to sell their shares. Millions of shares where sold which made the market drop even lower. This began a downward spiral of losses which finally caused the market to crash on October 29, 1929.