Profiles in Character #20: Pete Seeger Promotes Justice with Songs

Under subpoena, folk singer Pete Seeger appeared before a Subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on August 18, 1955.  Investigated by the FBI for years, he was promptly asked if he had sung for a Communist Party gathering as reported in the Daily Worker.  Knowing the “Hollywood Ten” had been convicted and jailed for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer such questions, Seeger could have taken the Fifth Amendment and walked away, could have named other performers HUAC wanted to know about or could have testified just about himself.  Instead, standing on First Amendment ground, he said:

“I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election or any of these private affairs.  I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.”

“I resent very much and very deeply,” he would go on to say, “that I am any less an American than anybody else.  I love my country very deeply, sir.”  What he wanted but was not allowed to do was talk about his songs, which he told them “cut across and find perhaps a unifying theme, basic humanity.”

Steeped in Puritan roots, the nonsmoking, non-drinking, private 26-year-old had moved from a childhood love of the ukulele to an adult passion for the five-string banjo, whose inscription said “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

Inspired by research, travels and the people he met, his love of folk music produced enchanting songs for children and social justice songs for adults, including some he wrote.  His songs reminded generations of America’s ideals, hoping to inspire action on behalf of them.  Union organizing, civil rights, aid to farmers, world peace and environmental cleanup were recipients of his vision and voice.   

HUAC’s anger led to a 373-9 vote in the House in 1956 to find him in contempt.  He was indicted on ten counts in 1957 and found guilty in 1961. Queried by the sentencing judge if he had anything to say, he asked to sing “Wasn’t That a Time,” a song mentioned during his trial.  Refusing, the judge gave him a year in jail on each count. In 1962 the Court of Appeals threw out what it said was a faulty indictment and dismissed the case. 

That result didn’t prevent the blacklisting that preceded his testimony and followed him for years. The Weavers, which he helped form, had gained national appeal with “Good Night, Irene,” but had been blacklisted in 1953. Seeger, now mostly unwanted on the stage or in the recording studio, focused instead on small performances, especially with children.  HUAC had thus inadvertently enabled him to seed the rising generation with a love of folk music and a passion for social change.

The 1960s would see his fame soar. He sang during the 1963 Birmingham civil rights campaign, the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery and led 500,000 in “Give Peace a Chance” at the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium March in Washington.

Yet fame was a by-product not the main goal.  He craved neither wealth nor awards. He was uncomfortable when attention focused on him, feeling at ease on stage only when the audience sang with him. When he learned what his manager was charging he demanded the fees be immediately reduced.  He hand-built his home on land overlooking the Hudson River, and the river would call to him in the major project of his later years.

Moved by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Seeger determined to clean up the Hudson.  His sailing sloop, the Clearwater, launched in 1969 and still plies the waters raising money, educating children, and returning the river to a natural state.  Criticized at the outset as a Don Quixote quest, his foundation won a huge settlement and GE’s help in cleaning PCBs it had dumped in the river.  “The whole idea,” as Seeger said, “was to reach out to rank-and-file people of all sorts and tell them, ‘This is our river.  Who’s going to save it if we don’t?’”

Pete Seeger was an imperfect man.  He could be demanding, especially of his wife Toshi without whose unending work his success would have been impossible. He could be wrong, taking years to denounce Stalin even though he himself was never a communist organizer.  Yet, his passion and humble commitment made a difference.  His biographer, David King Dunaway, shares a reported incident about him by someone who said he spotted a man holding a sign “standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow. I go a little bit down the road so that I can turn and come back, and when I get him in view, the solitary and elderly figure, I see that what’s written on the sign is “Peace.””

Pete Seeger did not expect anyone to join him that nasty day, but millions did just that, both before and since. 

Photo Credit: U.S. Postal Service - stamp issued Spring 2022