North Carolina was no place for all that jazz

“At the time I was making a reputation… I couldn’t go South….

“Greenville was a nice little country town… It became a university place  later, but it was not a place I could take my family. That’s a terrible thing to live with… and I guess John [Coltrane] and [Thelonious] Monk experienced some of the same things. We knew about people being lynched….”

—  The late Billy Taylor, recalling the North Carolina he and his fellow jazz giants left behind.

Quote from “John Coltrane and Black America’s Quest for Freedom, Spirituality and the Music,” edited by Leonard Brown (2010).