•Jazz was not accepted in the elite institutions of the world of music in the 1940s or 50s.•But it gained a toehold in some of them in the 1930s, in others after 1960.•In the 1940s and 50s, jazz advocates built alternative institutions for jazz, duplicating the mainstream or working around it.•Alternative institutions increased the profile of jazz in mainstream ones after 1960.•Consecration of musics like jazz is therefore uneven and combined.•Jazz will attain full equality with classical music unless advocacy efforts stop. I find that jazz gained a toehold in U.S. concert halls, music awards, festivals, and schools in the 1930s, 60s, 70s or 80s. I reconcile this with extant research, which identifies the 1940s and 50s as the crucial moment for jazz, by linking the processes that transpired in the sites I examine to those past research has focused on. During the 1940s and the 50s, facing resistance in the mainstream institutions I highlight, advocates of jazz built alternative institutions that duplicated or worked around the mainstream; some of these then helped jazz enlarge its mainstream foothold. Based on these findings, I extend the conceptualization of consecration as ongoing permanent revolution: in already settled fields, the consecration of new, racially stigmatized art forms may follow from uneven and combined development across multiple institutional sites, constituting a string of loosely-related events of varying intensity. A reassessment of the highbrow-lowbrow scheme follows.