When social movements need to march in beat, Dick Flacks gives them a song. What follows is a brief tour through influential songs and poems of protest and resistance in U.S. history, many with rural roots, with Flack’s extensive knowledge as a guide
Striking U.S. Workers Are Off to a Great Start (1786), YOU Are the Un-Americans! (1956), The Pentagon Papers, Warts and All (1971), ¡Vieques Libre! (2001), A Conspiracy of Hope (1986), The Beginning of the End for Apartheid (1976)
In 1949, Paul Robeson performed the “Song of the Jewish Partisans” in Moscow, in the Yiddish original. At a time of rising Stalinist antisemitism, Robeson’s act of solidarity made clear his stand against any form of racism.
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These lyrics were written by Abel Meeropol (who later adopted the children of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg) under the pen name Lewis Allen (1943); the music was composed by Earl Robinson. This 1947 cover by Paul Robeson includes all the original verses.
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Building a Doomsday Machine (1950), A Rogue Agency? (1975), Origins of International Women’s Day (1909), Gradual Emancipation Is Better than None (1780), Kicking Jim Crow off the Bus (1955), Robeson’s Best (1940), Happy Birthday, Vivaldi! (1725)
It is a song that turns the tragic tale it begins with into a veritable shout, for it concludes not as a somber dirge for one fallen fellow worker but as a soaring call for collective action and for all working people to stand up for their rights.
Pioneering black singer Paul Robeson was born on this day (April 9) in 1898. One of America’s great radical figures, it was his encounters with Britain’s labour movement which inspired his socialist and anti-imperialist politics.
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