As it Happened: The Archive Edition — Activist and folk singer Pete Seeger
Even after he was blacklisted and held in contempt of Congress, Pete Seeger refused to quit
Pete Seeger, who died in 2014, spent the better part of his 94 years doing two things: singing and fighting. Not with his fists — he was a pacifist, after all.
But his career as a performer — like that of his friend and contemporary, Woody Guthrie — was shaped from the beginning around his activism.
That activism came at great cost. In the '50s, he was hauled before the House un-American activities committee, where he refused to answer questions about his political beliefs or affiliations. He was held in contempt of Congress and sentenced to jail — a conviction that was eventually overturned. But he was blacklisted from radio and TV, and would not appear again on network television until the late 1960s.
In 1995, former As it Happens host Michael Enright reached Seeger for a feature interview. Here are some highlights from that conversation.
On being blacklisted
"Actually, the blacklist is something that I've lived with all my life. My father was fired from a good job in the University of California because he felt that the First World War was an imperialist war, and he felt more like a pacifist. And he got me into radical politics back in the Dirty Thirties.
"And in 1942, I believe, Woody Guthrie — the fellow who wrote This Land Is Your Land — he and I and a few others actually did get on network radio. Once.
"The next day, a headline said: 'Comedy Folk Singers Try to Infiltrate Radio'. And that was the last job we got.
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"For about 17 years, I couldn't get on network TV. I did get on local TV. I'd be singing at some college and I'd knock on the door of a local station and say, 'I'm singing at the college tonight. Could I say a few words in between you playing some records, or whatever?'
"And they said, 'Oh yeah, we remember Goodnight Irene, c'mon!" And I'd speak for three, four minutes, and I'd be on my way.
"A few minutes later, they'd get an angry phone call: 'Why did you let that communist song go on your airwaves?' But it was too late. I called it cultural guerrilla tactics. I carried on for 20 or 30 years."
On 'political correctness' and media in America
"They picked on one of the big weaknesses of the Communist Party in picking out that phrase 'political correctness' — because the Communist Party did use that term and they just turned it upside down and fired it back on them.
"Now the way they handle people who would like to get a sensible word in edgeways, they don't ban them. No, you can say anything you want. They just drown them out.
"I'm convinced that it's a bad habit of the media. But when I meet people in the media who tells me, 'Look, we're in business like you are. We have to sell newspapers. We have to get listeners and viewers, or else we're out of business.'
"And I look them right in the eye and said, 'Yeah, so does cocaine. Would you sell that?'
"And [they're] usually silent, and I answer, 'Tell me! Will you sell? Will you answer that question? Would you sell cocaine if they'd let you? Answer! Answer!'
"These guys know that if it was allowed, they would sell anything that makes money."
On why he viewed himself as conservative
"The word 'conservatism' is a joke too. My father used to say, 'The truth is a rabbit and a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say: It's somewhere in there.'
"But the word conservatism has really been really turned upside down. Also, I'm basically a conservative myself, you know.
"Most people who call themselves conservatives, they'd like to turn the clock back to the days when there was no income tax. They'd like to go back.
"That's about the only thing that [they're] conservative about. They don't mind coming into a town with a lot of bulldozers and turning everything upside down. Me, I sincerely would like to turn the clock back to the days when people lived in small villages and we took care of each other. Life was shorter, harder, dangerous. But we took care of each other, and we wouldn't be wondering, as many of us are now, if there is going to be a human race in 100 years.
"It's not just the air is going to go and the water is going to go. The forests will go. All sorts of things will go wrong."
On his main purpose in life
"I'd like to see people making up songs, as a matter of fact. That's my main purpose in life: to persuade people that it's fun to make music and fun to make up songs.
"And I when they say, 'Well, I can't write a song — that takes skill,' I say, 'Well, do what Woody Guthrie did. He'd take over an old song and change a few words, and before you know it, he had a new verse.'
"Now if you've done that for a few years, you find you can make up more than just a verse."
On how to save the world
"I'm now quite convinced that if there's a world here in 100 years, it's going to be saved not by any one big organization of any sort — no big political group, no big church, no big movement. It's going be saved by millions upon millions upon millions of little organizations.
"It just might be that what Jesus and Jeremiah and Muhammad and Buddha and a lot of other people talked about. It just might come true. We might start treating each other decently, because we have to.
"If we don't treat each other decently there will be no human race."