What A Wonderful World

Louis Armstrong and the Cultural Cold War

During the Cold War, Louis Armstrong was promoted around the world as a symbol of US culture, racial progress, and foreign policy. It was during the Jim Crow Era that Armstrong was appointed a Goodwill Jazz Ambassador, and his job entailed representing the American government’s commitment to advance the liberties of African Americans at home, while also working to endorse the social freedom of those abroad.

Armstrong’s visit to Africa’s Gold Coast was hugely successful and attracted magnificent crowds and widespread press coverage. His band’s performance in Accra resulted in public enthusiasm due to what was deemed an “unbiased support for the African course….”.

Although Armstrong was indeed advocating the US foreign policy strategies in Africa, he did not whole-heartedly agree with some of the American government’s decisions in the South. During the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, Armstrong made it a point to openly criticize President Eisenhower and Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. Instigated by Faubus’s decision to use the National Guard to prevent Black students from integrating into Little Rock High School, Armstrong abandoned his ambassadorship periodically, jeopardizing the US’s attempt to use Armstrong to represent America’s racial position abroad, specifically in the Soviet Union.

It was not until Eisenhower sent federal troops to uphold integration that Armstrong reconsidered and went back to his position with the State Department. Although he had deserted his trip to the Soviet Union, he later went on to tour several times for the US government, including a six-month tour African tour in 1960-1961. It was during this time that Armstrong continued to criticize the American government for dragging its feet on the Civil Right issue, highlighting the contradictory nature of the Goodwill Jazz Ambassadors mission. Armstrong and Dave and Iona Brubeck (other Ambassadors at the time) asserted that although they represented the American government, they did not represent all of the same policies.