Public Employee Press

Pete Seeger
1919-2014

The iconic folk and protest singer turned "We Shall Overcome" from a hymn into the anthem of the civil rights movement as he fought for union rights, racial justice, peace and the environment.

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Pete Seeger, folk and protest singer and longtime activist for labor, civil rights, anti-war and environmental causes, died Jan. 27. He was 94.

While the native New Yorker spent most of his later years in the Hudson River town of Beacon, N.Y., his songs traveled the world and inspired generations of activists and singers.

Bruce Springsteen called Seeger's music a "testament to the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane and justified ends."

A serious student of American folklore, Seeger helped revitalize the folk music tradition beginning in the 1930s and '40s. He sang and recorded songs from all over the globe at venues from concert halls to elementary schools, strikers' picket lines, civil rights demonstrations and peace rallies.

The 1960s civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome," was one of many songs he helped popularize. Seeger said he adapted the song from one he first heard as a gospel hymn titled "I'll Overcome Someday" from activists on a tobacco workers' union picket line in South Carolina. Folksinger Joan Baez led a quarter million demonstrators in singing "We Shall Overcome" at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Other songs Seeger helped introduce to wider audiences were Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," and "Goodnight Irene," by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. After World War II, Seeger helped form the Weavers quartet, which recorded the Lead Belly tune and saw it sell 2 million copies. Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," and and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" became popular anti-Vietnam-war songs.

Peter Seeger was born in New York City in 1919. Music and political activism ran deep in the Seeger household. His father, Charles Seeger, was a conscientious objector during World War I and a music scholar his mother was a composer and violinist. His great-grandfather was an anti-slavery activist and his uncle, Alan Seeger, was a poet.

In 1936, Seeger attended Harvard University, where he was a classmate of President John F. Kennedy. He dropped out in his sophomore year and worked in the folklore archives of the Library of Congress before he decided to hitchhike across the country. As he traveled, he learned new songs and guitar techniques and met other political activists and his heroes Guthrie and Lead Belly.

During the 1950s Seeger, like hundreds of activists, artists and unionists, became a target of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "red scare" suppression of dissent and was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to name his political colleagues but did volunteer to serenade the committee members with his songs. Seeger was convicted of contempt of Congress, but the conviction was overturned and the government never retried him.

In his last decades, Seeger spearheaded campaigns to clean up the Hudson River; his activism led the Environmental Protection Agency to start cleansing toxic waste from the river. Seeger and his wife Toshi were founders of the annual summer Clearwater Festival held in Croton Point Park in Westchester County.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton presented Seeger with America's highest arts honor, the National Medal of Arts. Seeger and Springsteen sang "This Land Is Your Land" before a throng of 400,000 at the Lincoln Memorial concert celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009.

"For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger," said Obama.