When Pops told the State Department: “Go to Hell”…and worse

For four decades into his fabulous career, Louis Armstrong played the happy Negro entertainer, never criticizing the White establishment what made him wealthy and world famous. He was loved by White America; called a servile Uncle Tom by many in the Black community. That all changed September 17, 1957 in Grand Forks, ND. Louis was there for a concert at Central High School; ironic as the racist revolt against integrating Little Rock’s Central High School, was rocking the nation 1,100 miles south. An intrepid 21 year old journalist and jazz fan, Larry Lubenow, finagled an interview with Pops before the concert. Warned by his editor to avoid politics, Lubenow couldn’t resist. “What about Little Rock, Mr. Armstrong?” Pops exploded. ”It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country. The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell”, indicating he was cancelling his upcoming Goodwill Tour of the Soviet Union. State had been trotting out Pops overseas to whitewash America’s horrid racist governance. ”The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?” He was a tad stronger on Ike, calling him “Two faced” and having “no guts”. Stronger still on Arkansas Governor Faubus whom he termed “a no-good motherfucker”.

That night the Grand Forks Herald published Lubenow’s account verbatim (except Faubus was rechristened “an uneducated plowboy”). The much slower social media of 1957 also exploded. Influential Whites called for a boycott of Louis’ concerts. Ford Motor threatened to pull its advertisements from a Bing Crosby special on which he was to appear. Van Cliburn’s manager refused to let him perform a duet with Armstrong on Steve Allen’s variety show. Southern Radio stations tossed all his records. His road manager offered an apology that Louis publicly rebuked the next day, “I said what somebody should have said a long time ago.” Five days later Ike nationalized the Arkansas National Guard enforcing Faubus’ refusal to integrate Central High, and sent in a thousand soldiers from the 101st Airborne to integrate the school.

How influential Armstrong’s comments were on Ike we’ll never know. But his one profanity laced outburst became an important element in the Little Rock Central High story and an oft neglected, but one of the most significant events in the spectacular life of Louis Daniel ‘Pops’ Armstrong.