African-American Corps: Then and Now

[Jd83]

Good article. Although the focus of the article was on the New York corps, they certainly were not alone. The Midwest had the Joliet Kingsmen and I'm sure there were others.

[Michael Boo]

Good article. Although the focus of the article was on the New York corps, they certainly were not alone. The Midwest had the Joliet Kingsmen and I'm sure there were others.

I remember the Chicago Yellow Jackets (who used to do my town's parade almost every year), the Hornets and a corps from the Paul Hall Boys and Girls Club.

[Bleu Raeder]

How about the Golden Shields from New Orleans around 1970?

[wolfgang]

That was back in the day when most membership was local, and the racial makeup of a corps was due mostly to demographics. With that said, I can't think of any reason why NYC shouldn't have a top tier junior corps. It has a population of about 8 million (almost half the population of the Netherlands) and I'm sure it has enough talented youth to form a very competetive corps. I guess it all boils down to money.

Money, and the fact that despite it's large population, much smaller areas such as Dayton, OH, Austin, TX, or Indianapolis, IN have more top-flight marching band programs to draw from.

For example (from the guard side of the equation)- NYC- 8,000,000 people

Dayton, OH- maybe 250,000? not sure.

If I was going to make a list of good winter guards, forget per capita, Dayton would win hands down in actual # of good winter guards (meaning guards who would be nationally competitive in WGI's 6 guard divisions).

Of course, NYC has the Met, Broadway, and one of the best orchestras in the world among many other world-class musicians, so it's easy to see why the pageantry arts wouldn't be as strong there.

We deal in a medium that does arrangements of great works.

They live in an area where they actually get to hear the works themselves performed every week by the finest musicians in the US and world.

Edited February 21, 2007 by wolfgang

[MikeD]

One other corps I remember are St Martin's Troubadors from Newark. I was in a suburban corps from nearby Livingston, the Imperial Guardsmen (68-69), and we competed against them in the Garden State Circuit all the time. We had exactly the same unis, black pants, white blouse, and red and black cross-sash sewed on the blouse...except the red and black were reversed (can't remember who had which color on top). They were about the same level as us...medium decent. I believe that at GSC champs in 69 they got in a fight on the field at Dover HS with (possibly) the Riversiders and their moderator shut them down on the spot. We used to joke at shows that putting the two of us together would have made one nice corps...we each had 20+ horns and about 12 drummers plus another dozen guard...us just about totally white and them all black.

Anotehr one I remember from my GSC teaching and judging days (76-80'ish) were the NY Lancers...wore all black unis if memory serves. A pretty decent GSC corps as well, made up of just about all black and Hispanic kids.

[Colee]

I remember back in the '80s when we competed against the New York Lancers and the CMCC Warriors. That was quite an eye opener for me. I was one of (less than) a handful of black girls marching in the predominantly white Ventures from Canada. It was amazing to see that there could actually be a whole drum corps made up of black kids. I also appreciated the differences that made each of our corps unique. I was very fortunate to make some life long friends who started out in these corps. We marched together in Garfield Cadets and it was then that I realized how much we had in common. They adopted me as their sister and that means more than I can ever explain.