One of the greatest unsung heroes of the modern day protest movement is who unfortunately is not well known with the youth of today. It is, however, difficult to emphasize the impact he’s had on me and so many others of my generation (1960s).

The amazing thing his that he is the gentlest of souls making it easy to misjudge the fortitude of his character. If you’ve never heard of him or are only familiar with the name I urge you to read on here and beyond because there is much to learn from Pete Seeger as he chose early on to travel a hard road fraught with hardship and adversity for one primary reason….because it was the right thing to do. Read and enjoy……  

Perhaps no single person in the 20th century has done more to preserve, broadcast, and re-distribute folk music than Pete Seeger, whose passion for politics, the environment, and humanity have earned him both ardent fans and vocal enemies since he first began performing in the late ’30s. His never-ending battle against injustice led to his being blacklisted during the McCarthy era, celebrated during the turbulent ’60s, and welcomed at union rallies throughout his life. His tireless efforts regarding global concerns such as environmentalism, population growth, and racial equality have earned him the respect and friendship of such political heroes as Martin Luther King, Jr., Woody Guthrie, and Cesar Chavez  

He is perhaps best known today as the author or co-author of the songs "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. 

Seeger is also widely credited with popularizing the traditional song "We Shall Overcome", which was recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists, and became the publicly perceived anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement soon after musicologist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960.   

Seeger was born in New York City, USA. His father, Charles Louis Seeger, was a musicologist and an early investigator of non-Western music, and his mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, a prominent classical violinist.His stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was one of the most significant female composers of the 20th century.   

In 1936 he heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina,and his life was changed forever. In 1943 he married Toshi-Aline Ohta, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. 

Seeger attended Harvard College where he was exposed to students with concerns about "what to do with Hitler", including those in the pacifist groups, the socialists and the Communist party. He dropped out of college in 1939. and he took a job in Washington, D.C., at the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress. In that capacity, he met and was influenced by many other musicians such as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He met Guthrie in person at a "Grapes of Wrath" migrant workers concert on March 3, 1940, and the two thereafter began a musical collaboration. 

Activism – As a young man Seeger was a U.S. communist party (CPUSA) member and activist. Here are some quotes from that era:

• "I like to say I’m more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other."
• "My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around ‘38. I drifted out in the ’50s. I apologize [in his recent book] for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader."
• "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.

played a defining role in the U.S. labor movement from the 1920s through the 1940s, founding most of the country’s major industrial unions (which would later implement the Smith Act) and pursuing intense anti-racist activity in workplaces and city communities throughout this first part of its existence.  

On March 3, 1940, he met Woody Guthrie at a migrant worker benefit concert, and soon after the two helped form the Almanac Singers, a loosely organized musical collective. The Almanac Singers‘ career was brief (lasting just over a year), but their pacifist attitudes and their ability to draw large crowds brought them under the scrutiny of the political powers of the time.   

Upon the dissolution of the Almanacs, Seeger, and Lee Hays formed the Weavers with Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman found universal success. Unfortunately, their leftist leanings had long been under the scrutiny of the FBI, and ironically, their straightforward and innocuous performances were drawing disdain from the diehard leftist press. In 1955 Seeger was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee and his testimony resulted in his being blacklisted for 7 years (and not officially cleared on charges of contempt until 1962).

Seeger left the Weavers in 1958, for a solo career just as the seeds of the music they planted were beginning to take root on college campuses and in coffeehouses across the U.S. He spent much of the ’60s in the South, marching in civil rights protests and arranging an old spiritual into what he named "We Shall Overcome," which has become the anthem of the pursuit for equality worldwide. In 1962, he put the words to a portion of the book of Ecclesiastes to music, capturing the feel of the changing climate of the youth movement in his song "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)."   

Seeger’s adherence to the sanctity of folk music came to a boiling point with the advent of folk-rock, and this was visibly demonstrated when he tried to pull the plug on Bob Dylan’s very electrified set with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. His objection to the Vietnam War was made evident during an appearance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 where he attacked Lyndon Johnson’s war policies during his performance of the song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."

Seeger focused his attention on environmental issues in the ’70s and ’80s, notably with the launch of the sloop Clearwater (a floating classroom, laboratory, stage, and speaker’s forum) onto the Hudson River in 1969. He also remained active on the festival circuit, appearing at outdoor folk concerts and organizing rallies for any number of causes, from labor unions to anti-pollution legislation.

 The ’90s saw Seeger on-stage receiving awards as often as performing music; with honors including receiving the nation’s highest artistic honors at the Kennedy Center, gaining entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and earning the Harvard Arts Medal (despite the fact that he opted not to graduate from the university). He also won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996, and in 1999 he traveled to Cuba to accept the Felix Varela Medal (Cuba’s highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism").

His ceaseless passion for reaching the hearts and minds of those who will listen is summed up by the inscription on his banjo which reads "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." Pete Seeger’s music does not force hate to surrender with muscle or intimidation, but with Seeger’s simple honesty and pure-hearted clarity which has truly changed the course of history during the 60-plus years that he has been performing.

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NOTE: If the mention of the "Communist Party" scares you, your conception might have been molded by what it became as it grew in the Soviet Union. The American Communist Party