These marvelous artistic feats occurred in spite of pain and in spite of oppression. Scott Joplin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, W.C. Handy, Duke Ellington, and Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm do not owe a debt of gratitude to the Plessy decision. They changed the world in spite of the Plessy decision, in spite of hundreds of years of genocide & subversion, and flying in the face of white supremacy, Black musicians laid the groundwork for everything we have to be grateful for as a culture today.