Born in Newport News, Va., in 1917, Fitzgerald came north with her mother, Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald, and stepfather, Joseph da Silva, when she was 2, at the start of the Great Migration. “You’re hearing blues, you’re hearing original jazz compositions,” the cultural critic Margo Jefferson says of Harlem during that period. “The Great Migration was bringing so many people like Ella’s mother, all with economic dreams, cultural dreams, social dreams. The world would have been opening up to her.”When Fitzgerald was 13, her beloved mother died and her life fell apart. There was a fine music program at the school, but Ella Fitzgerald was not in the choir: it was all white.” Deemed “ungovernable,” Fitzgerald was put in solitary confinement.

Source: New York Times June 25, 2020 22:18 UTC