Venmo: @bobbyswungover This is part of the Harvest Moon Ball essay series. To see all the Harvest Moon Ball essays, please visit Swungover’s HMB page. Integration & Dancing On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional in public schools. From the south across the mid-west, the nation was about to get a little closer to equality. Though the New York-based NAACP and their famous Harlem-resident lawyer Thurgood Marshall were behind the case, and proud of their victory, Marshall knew there was no such thing as ..read more

Venmo: @bobbyswungover This is part of the Harvest Moon Ball essay series. To see all the Harvest Moon Ball essays, please visit Swungover’s HMB page. Community & Dancing From the Daily News, Oct. 18, 1953. The article above sheds light on something very important about Harlem, and Black American communities in general. Not only does the community greatly support performing arts, they support them from the amateur to the professional. Harlem history is a clear example of this. Contests like the famous Apollo amateur talent nights allowed Ella Fitzgerald to show what she was capable ..read more

This is a new series breaking down the names of the original air steps of the pioneers of Lindy Hop from the 1930s-1980s. Check out other posts in the series here. PLEASE NOTE! When considering what to donate, please note the steps, the original dancers who danced them, the names of the steps, and the contributions of the many who helped put names to them are not my intellectual property, and therefore are not what I’m asking donations for. Basically, I do not ask for donations for the creation of the content, but merely the researching, gathering, and compiling of the informat ..read more

Venmo: @bobbyswungover This is part of the Harvest Moon Ball essay series. To see all the Harvest Moon Ball essays, please visit Swungover’s HMB page. (Essay 18 of 23.) Malcolm X & Dancing In January, 1952, Malcom X walked out of prison. He had walked in, in 1946, as Malcolm Little. Malcolm was a very intelligent youth, who suffered a great deal of personal trauma, on top of the general trauma developed by being a Black American man in America in his time. (Black Americans in general still experience trauma by growing up in America.) His father’s suspicious death, followed by his m ..read more

This is a new series breaking down the names of the original air steps of the pioneers of Lindy Hop from the 1930s-1980s. PLEASE NOTE! When considering what to donate, please note the steps, the original dancers who danced them, the names of the steps, and the contributions of the many who helped put names to them are not my intellectual property, and therefore are not what I’m asking donations for. Basically, I do not ask for donations for the creation of the content, but merely the researching, gathering, and compiling of the information. Please take that into consideration w ..read more

Dear readers, The writer at work in the early days of Swungover. Our last article was Swungover’s 300th post. We are, frankly, amazed, and also now realize where a great deal of our 30s went. Looking back, the articles weren’t all great. And many of them were long. And though there was good intent, we can see sometimes laughable, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes cringe-worthy examples of naiveite, self-indulgence, bias, and a characteristically ADHD approach to grammar, spelling, and not finishing series we started.     And perhaps you’ve noticed some of its specific idios ..read more

Jean with her brother Ray Phelps. Photo courtesy of Rusty Frank. The legendary Californian Lindy Hopper Jean Veloz passed away Sunday, Jan 15, 2023. She was 98. Jean Veloz was born Jane Phelps on March 1, 1924 in Los Angeles. From a very young age she wanted to be in the movies. As a teenager, Jean learned SoCal’s local swing dances (“Swing,” Bal-Swing, and Balboa) and the recently-imported Lindy Hop. Like many of the dancers of the era, she learned from siblings and friends, most notably her brothers Robert and Raymond (“Ray”). Soon Jean developed a well-poised and theatrical swing dance styl ..read more

Venmo (Click here) PayPal (Click here) We here at Swungover used to refer to the first generation of Lindy Hop as “The Dark Ages” due to the lack of footage we, and the mainstream Lindy Hop scene as a whole, had of their dancing. The best we could get was grainy copies of After Seben , the handful of stories in Norma and Frankie’s books, and the recollections of “Shorty” George Snowden, Al, and Leon in Marshall Stearns’ Jazz Dance. (All of which deserve a place on a Lindy Hoppers history book shelf, btw.) Over the last decade, however, passionate researchers and YouTube have unearthed some wo ..read more

Venmo: @bobbyswungover This is part of the Harvest Moon Ball essay series. To see all the Harvest Moon Ball essays, please visit Swungover’s HMB page. Mentors & Dancing We have not mentioned Herbert “Whitey” White much since the World War II essays. When last left him, he had moved upstate from Manhattan and started a small nightclub and bar named the Savoy for Black American soldiers stationed there. After the war, the club must have continued doing well enough, because he stayed there, rather than coming back to Harlem. He apparently even had a farm. Considering what we know of W ..read more

Venmo: @bobbyswungover This is part of the Harvest Moon Ball essay series. To see all the Harvest Moon Ball essays, please visit Swungover’s HMB page. Maps & Dancing This map appeared in The Law of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: A Handbook of Your Basic Rights, by Edwin S. Newman, 1949. In 1949, this is what the country looked like in terms of Civil Rights. This map was made up to help Black Americans understand what they could expect in each state they visited or considered living in. (It would also serve Black American promotors and performers well, like the Jazz musician ..read more