Passports, including Eubie Blake’s
One hundred years ago today … The US had recently changed regulations for acquiring a passport, causing some problems, but not for jazz pioneer Eubie Blake.
Wikicommons.
On July 12, 1920, Eubie (legally James H. Blake) and Avis Elizabeth Cecelia Lee (legally Aves E. Blake–the two were married) were issued a passport permitting them to travel to England and France. They seem to have not traveled right away, as Eubie Blake is mentioned by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of August 10 to be playing with Noble Sissle at the Bushwick Theater, this a year before the debut of the pair’s landmark musical Shuffle Along.
It is likely that the Blakes applied for the passport in the Spring of 1920 and therefore had paid a one dollar application fee. Anyone applying after June 30 had to pay ten.
The New York Times, 1 July 1920, p. 18. The Chronicle of America.
The statute referred to above is available digitally by Hathitrust here.
The Evening World, 16 July 1920 p. 12. The Chronicle of America.
The cost seems to have been prohibitive for many; applications dropped at the New York office, where one-third of US passport applications were filed.
The New York Times, 18 July 1920, p. 16. New York Times Archive.
New passport regulations were seen as one of the causes of congestion at Ellis Island (which has, naturally, been a topic of several of our previous posts).
Passports as we know them came into common use after World War I.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, JULY 20, 2020.
TAGS: passports, Ellis Island, jazz, music, African American history, travel