Pete Seeger has been making the music that has accompanied and inspired social justice movements throughout the last 60+ years. His 90th birthday is a cause for commemoration and celebration. The article below contains a link to a website that is a YOUTUBE interview with Mr. Seeger talking about the Peekskill Riot, which occurred on August 27, 1949 just 6 weeks before my arrival on this planet. Paul Robseon was slated to sing and had actually performed at the same place 3 times prior to the riot. Here’s a bit of background on what lead to this time being different. It is from Wikipedia:
Previously three concerts had been performed by Paul Robeson in Peekskill without an incident, but in recent years Robeson had been increasingly vocal against the Ku Klux Klan and other forces of white supremacy, both domestically and internationally. Robeson specifically made a transformation from someone who was primarily a singer into a political persona. Robeson had also appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to oppose a bill that would require Communists to register as foreign agents, and, just months before the concert in 1949, he had appeared at the World Peace Conference in Paris, stating “it is unthinkable that American Negroes will go to war in behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations… against a country which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.” In the early stages of the Cold War and Red scare, and its accompanying wide anti-Communist sentiments, such a comment was seen by many as very anti-American. The local paper, The Peekskill Evening Star, condemned the concert and encouraged people to make their position on Communism felt, but fell short of espousing violence.There was a racial element to the riots including burning crosses and lynches in effigy of Robeson both in Peekskill and in other areas of the United States.
And here’s the tribute to Pete…
Pete Seeger at 90
by The Nation
by Peter Rothberg
In January, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Pete Seeger was the oldest person to perform as part of Barack Obama’s inauguration festivities.
Singing the “greatest song about America ever written” (Bruce Springsteen’s words) before 500,000 people live and tens of millions more on television, the then-89-year old legend crooned two little-known verses of his friend Woody Guthrie’s 1940 patriotic standard, “This Land is Your Land” — both about Depression-era poverty — restoring the song to its former glory over the sanitized version that ruled for too many years.
Over the course of a remarkable lifetime, Seeger has been an ambassador for peace, social justice and the best kind of patriotism . A uniquely American mix of blueblood and bluegrass — a product of Harvard University and the son of a violinist mother and musicologist father — Seeger has lived the story of the American left in the 20th century. The celebrations of his 90th birthday on Sunday offer a good opportunity to showcase and celebrate the causes to which he’s devoted his great life.
Defiantly leftist, pacifist–and for a decade or so, Communist–Seeger has embraced and supported virtually every major progressive advance of the 20th century. He’s sung and spoken out for organized labor, against McCarthyism, in support of racial justice, on behalf of nuclear abolition and against the Vietnam War; his voice put early wind into the sails of the environmental movement.
The right to dissent in a democracy has been a cornerstone of Seeger’s activism. In the fourth episode of the video series This Brave Nation Seeger talked about the infamous 1949 riot in Peekskill, NY, and the impact it made on his political development and commitment to free speech.
HERE’S A YOUTUBE VIDEO OF MR. SEEGER TALKING ABOUT THE RIOT IN PEEKSKILL ALONG WITH FOOTAGE FROM THE INCIDENT. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuO7XpFelNw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecommondreams%2Eorg%2Fprint%2F41583&feature=player_embedded
Seeger’s songs have engaged people, particularly the youth, to question the value of war, to ban nuclear weapons, to work for international solidarity and against racism wherever it is practiced, and to assume ecological responsibility.
A particular hero to the civil rights movement on whose behalf he’s worked so tirelessly, Seeger made his first trip south at the invitation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1956, and returned in ’65, again at King’s personal invitation, to join the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Amid the tension and heat, Seeger went from campfire to campfire when the marchers stopped for the night, raising morale with rollicking sing-alongs of new freedom songs.
Seeger also vigorously joined protests against the Vietnam war, playing countless benefits and protests and recording “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy ,” the lyrics of which have renewed relevance today: “But every time I read the papers/That old feeling comes on/We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy/And the big fool says push on.”
Sometime soon after King’s assassination in 1968, Seeger began to focus his energies locally around the town of Beacon, New York and the notoriously polluted Hudson River. Gathering together friends and colleagues, he picked up a literal hammer, this time to build the sort of sailing ship that hadn’t been seen on the river in decades to raise consciousness of environmental issues. They named it the Clearwater. Seeger also established Hudson River Sloop Clearwater , a group which sponsors annual eco-festivals and acts as a bulwark against polluters in the area. Today, people can swim in the Hudson again.
Seeger birthed a folk revival that remains strong and relevant, and the music he championed is still sung on marches and picket lines coast to coast. As he moves into his tenth decade, it’s worth celebrating the music he has made–and the changes he has helped to bring about.
Makes me smile!