Iconic Folk Singer Pete Seeger, Pro-Worker Troubadour, Dies At 94
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Iconic folk singer Pete Seeger,
who initially rose to fame as an outspoken
pro-worker troubadour – “We Shall
Overcome” was originally a union song –
died
Jan. 28 after a brief illness. He was
94. Seeger never made a secret of his
pro-worker stands, even when they got him
into political trouble in the McCarthy Era of
the 1950s. He was blacklisted by
mainstream media, and
even kept out of some union halls, after
refusing to name names before the
witch-hunting House Un-American Activities
Committee. But he never lost his
love for social justice, with workers and labor
the first and prime among his
causes, said Joe Uehlein, a
folksinger/activist, a former top worker at
the
AFL-CIO Industrial Unions Department, and a
friend of Seeger’s.
With Woody Guthrie,
Seeger was crusading for workers and inspiring
them with his songs long before
World War II. After that, he extended
his zeal to the civil rights movement, adapting
“We Shall Overcome” for that.
Afterwards came the peace movement, the
environmental movement and women’s rights,
among other causes.
Seeger introduced “We
Shall Overcome” to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
in 1957 at an observance in
Tennessee. “That song sticks in your
head, doesn’t it?” the civil rights leader
told aides afterwards.
And “Pete was full of
ideas how to bridge the labor-environmental
gap,” Uehlein says, recounting a
recent meeting with Seeger at the
folksinger’s home in Beacon, N.Y.
“And he spoke about labor, the CIO and the
AFL-CIO in glowing terms.”
“Which Side Are
You On?” “Talking Union” “There Once
Was A Union Maid” “We’ve Got To Go
Down And Join The Union” “If
I Had A Hammer” are just a few of the many
pro-worker pro-union songs that
Seeger either authored or popularized during
his 70-plus year career.
Seeger’s involvement
with unions extended almost until the day he
died. In Buffalo for an anti-war
activists’
conference late last year, he dropped in at The
Newspaper Guild’s joint
district council meeting there, too, and
sang.
That’s typical, said two union leaders/folk
singers who were also close
friends, Uehlein and Baldemar Velasquez,
President of the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee.
“We were doing the
Campbell Soup boycott in the 80s, and we had a
big meeting at an AFSCME local
hall in New York City – and about half an
hour in, Pete shows up with a banjo
on his back, walks right in like the rest of
us. Just in time for a music break.
He got us all revved up,” says
Velasquez.
Even when he became an
American icon, Seeger remained outspokenly
pro-worker. Invited to sing at Democratic
President
Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009,
Seeger sang all of “This Land Is
Your Land” – including the anti-capitalist
anti-property last two verses that
others never utter.
“Over the years, Pete used his
voice
– and his hammer – to strike blows for
worker’s rights and civil rights,
world peace and environmental
conservation. And he always invited
us to sing along,”
Obama said. “For reminding us where we
come from and showing us where we
need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete
Seeger.”
“Pete Seeger sang truth
to power,” said New York Musicians Local 802
President Tino Gagliardi. Seeger was a
member for decades. “As a champion of
civil rights and the
dignity of working people, and of course as a
musician, he was an inspiration
to anyone who believes that justice is
possible.”
Yet another memorable
moment came, after the blacklist finally faded,
when the Smothers Brothers had
Seeger on their hit variety show in the late
1960s and, after an initial ban,
CBS let him sing “Waist Deep In The Big
Muddy,” his noted and controversial
anti-Vietnam War song, which came from the
soldiers’ point of view. Decades
later, others applied “Waist Deep”
to the Iraq War, too.
“Here’s a guy who stood
up to the McCarthy era with just a banjo in his
hand,” Uehlein says. “We’ll carry
on his legacy to our children
through song and activism,” adds Velasquez,
who spent five hours last year –
with his grandson – at a session with Seeger
in Beacon. “That’s the way to honor
him.”
- by Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff
Writer
Click here for Mike
Hall’s remembrance of Seeger on the
AFL-CIO’s blog.
See also A
Final Q&A with Pete Seeger
(1919-2014) by Mike Elk, In These
Times
photo: Roger Johnson and Pete Seeger leading
Freedom School students singing
"We Shall Overcome" at Palmer's Crossing
Community Center, August 4,
Freedom Summer, 1964, photographed by Herbert
Randall