According to Eddie Condon, a prominent jazz musician and bandleader, “If you held up a trumpet in the night air of the Stroll, it would play itself!" (Pick 2010). The Stroll was a historic site in Chicago that helped foster the early beginnings of Chicago jazz. Located on State Street between 26th and 39th Streets, the Stroll “was where all the action was,” overflowing with Black humanity during both the day and at night (White & White 1998). The early beginnings of the Stroll date prior to World War I as a “bright light district” on South State Street (Pick 2010). With the help of the Great Migration, the Black population in urban cities in the north, including Chicago, grew exponentially. As the Chicagoan population expanded, the Stroll provided the ideal location for Blacks to congregate. The historical area was regarded as a ‘black Bohemia’ with venues including cabarets, pool halls, vaudeville theaters, and dance palaces, all of which contributed to the location’s symbolism as the epicenter of early jazz in Chicago (Pick 2010).

Activities were abundant on South State Street as daytime provided hours for a congregating public “to loiter, to gossip and watch the street life” while evening hours were buzzing, “lights blazed and the sidewalks were crowded with patrons attending the jazz clubs and those just gazing at all the activity” (White & White 1998). Furthermore, the entertainment culture in the Stroll was on full display, and the public dressed and conducted themselves as such (White & White 1998). Additionally, Shane and Graham White (1998) write that while “there were women on the Stroll…it was a place that displayed an aggressively masculine ethos.” 

The expansion of the Stroll as the epicenter of early jazz was largely influenced by its portrayal in Chicago newspapers. In particular, the Chicago Defender was responsible for publicizing the Stroll at both a city-wide and national level (Kenney 1993). To give one a better sense, the Chicago Defender touted the Stroll as, “’a Mecca for Pleasure’ and, likened South Side Chicago to Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem, a center for cultural attraction for African Americans, where no one need fear ‘racial embarrassment’” (Kenney 1993).

As the 1920’s wore on, the style of jazz music in Chicago underwent progressive change as did the location of mainstream entertainment. With the prohibition era hitting its stride, “Prohibition raids and gangland violence eventually put an end to The Stroll and the ‘black and tan’ nightclub scene of the roaring twenties” (Pick 2010). Furthermore, the opening of the Savoy Ballroom and Regal Theater, an elegant entertainment complex, at 47th and South Parkway in 1927, shifted the center of Black nightlife in Chicago away from the Stroll (White & White 1998). Yet, the collaborations the Stroll promoted inside the Black community made it one of the most important sites during the budding jazz age in Chicago. While the Stroll became somewhat obsolete following the Savoy’s opening in 1927, its role as the first center for Black nightlife in Chicago during the jazz age make it an incredibly historic site.

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