In the roaring twenties, few cultural trends spread faster or stirred more controversy than jazz. To its fans, the new music was exciting and full of life. To its critics, it represented everything that was wrong with a rapidly changing society.
In 1924, one of jazz’s most outspoken opponents was the mayor of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Convinced that the syncopated rhythms of the Jazz Age were corrupting the nation’s youth, Mayor Daniel L. Hart proposed an ordinance that would discourage jazz music in favor of classical and sentimental tunes.
He went so far as to declare that jazz had done more harm than alcohol and warned that a steady diet of jazz and frankfurters would drive the next generation mad.
Mayor Would Prohibit Jazz
WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania. — “Between jazz music and frankfurters, the next generation will be crazy,” announced Mayor Daniel L. Hart, recognized throughout the East as “the man from Wilkes-Barre,” in explaining a city ordinance which he presented to city council and which has as its purpose the suppression of jazz.
The ordinance would prohibit the playing of jazz music in preference to classical and sentimental airs on the streets of Wilkes-Barre or in public places in the city. Commenting on the ordinance, which was referred to the committee of the whole and ordered print, the mayor said,
“Jazz has done more harm in the country than drink. No sensible person wants jazz music, which was designed for the flapper.. The saddest sight one can imagine is a big, healthy fat man, apparently a he-man at the head of an orchestra or band, playing jazz music and displaying the grace of an elephant.”
The mayor presented another ordinance aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. It would present the parading on the streets of masked men intent upon lawlessness, the commission of crime or otherwise annoying inhabitants of the city.
Source: The Washington Times. Washington, D.C. August 7, 1924.
