Woodlawn Conservancy, Inc. will designate April 2017 Jazz Heritage Month at The Woodlawn Cemetery. and will host concerts, a lecture on the Second Line tradition at Woodlawn, potentially given by Dr. Richard Brent Turner, a book signing of "Duke Ellington: American Composer and Icon" and social tea with Woodlawn Conservancy director, Mercedes Ellington, and a Jazz heritage tour with NYC Ellington Society chapter President Ray Carman. The focus of programming will be early jazz practitioners who are at rest at Woodlawn and whose funerals were the occasion for the blending of Southern traditions with traditional funeral practices. The trolley tour will stop at Woodlawn's original jazz corner and participants will be invited to join a traditional Second Line celebration march to the grave of W.C. Handy.
