When the Beatles Refused to Play Before Segregated Audiences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

https://www.openculture.com/2020/06/when-the-beatles-refused-to-play-before-segregated-audiences-on-their-first-u-s-tour-1964.html

In 1964, at the height of Beatlemania, the band was booked to play Florida’s Gator Bowl in Jacksonville just after a devastating hurricane and months after the introduction of the Civil Rights Act into Congressional deliberations. Major political shifts were happening in the country and would have happened with or without the Beatles taking a stand for integration.

But they took a stand nonetheless and used their celebrity power to show how meaningless the system of Apartheid in the South actually was. It could, in fact, be annulled by fiat should a group with as much leverage as the Fab Four refuse to play along.

#TheBeatles #beatles #audience #segregation #live #performances #equality #openculture