prize17-2, Exercise 1: The Storyville legend

Model answer (check the details):

The legend says that Storyville, New Orleans's licensed red-light district (open 1897 to 1917), was the birthplace of jazz, and that when the district was closed in 1917 under naval pressure, its musicians left the city and carried the music north. Early jazz books and a 1947 film repeated this tidy story.

Two reasons to doubt it:
1. Evidence of music across the city. Jazz was played in dance halls, parks, lodges and parades throughout New Orleans, both before and after 1917, so the district was one workplace among many.
2. Wider causes of the move north. Musicians left for work, wages and escape from segregation, partly as part of the larger movement of Black Americans northward (Chapter 3), not only because one district closed.

Care: the closure itself is documented. The doubt applies to the claims built on it.