There's a stunning moment in my friend's book when the horrific Ty Cobb encounters Louis Armstrong in front of the Palmer House Hotel. Cobb sneers at Armstrong and threatens him in the way certain white men knew they could do in 1927.
The scene got me to thinking about the beloved Armstrong: how he made the rest of the world like us during the cold war. If he was thinking: "I can't breathe" when he blew his horn, we didn't find out about it. No, he smoothed a path for us to "think to ourselves what a wonderful world."
I wish we had a little of Louis today.
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