>> next a look at folks and their political activism throughout the great depression, world war two, the cold war, the korean war, the mccarthy era, and the civil rights era. .. americas of special income this land is your land, but few of minow roots of his activism and

the death of his commitment to social justice. our book takes a look at the iconic guthrie and the context in which he struggled both personally and on a wide political stage. tonight's author is a professor of american literature and culture at the university of england. he's the author of the previously published book american culture in the 1970's, and he is as you will soon find out also a professional boxing year and musician. it's my pleasure to introduce to you the author of "woody guthrie american radical" well kaufman. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ it is a muddy harvick road ♪ my poor feet have traveled this team rhode ♪ ♪ on the west word we've rolph

♪ into the desert mountains for cold ♪ ♪ i have worked in orchards of peaches ♪ ♪ i've slept on the ground in the light of your moon ♪ ♪ at the edge of your city ♪ we come with and dust and we go with the wind ♪ ♪ california, arizona, i worked on your copps ♪ ♪ and north up to oregon to gather your kutz ♪ ♪ did from the ground, cut the grapes from your fine ♪ ♪ put a place on your table that white sparkling wine ♪

♪ and green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground ♪ ♪ from the dam where the waters run down ♪ ♪ every state in this union as migrants have been ♪ ♪ and will work in the fight and will fight until we win ♪ ♪ it's always we ramble this river in the diane ♪ ♪ of the green valley i will work until i die ♪ ♪ and this land i will defend with my life because my pastures are plenty must always be free ♪ ♪

[applause] thank you. "woody guthrie american rattle" was born appropriately on bastille day, july 14th, in a place called okay of oklahoma. he said it was one of the square dancing drinking, yelling, preaching, walking, crying, shooting, bleeding, gambling, fist fighting, gun club and razor carrying ranching farm towns because it blossomed into one of the first boom towns. they discovered there around 1920 when woody was about 8-years-old and so he saw the population quintuple overnight from like to thousand to 10,000. one day it was a sleepy southern hamlet and the next she woke up and everybody was there and was

filled with these roughneck oil boom chasers' making their fortunes hand over fist every day until 1928 when the oil ran out and they went from boom to bust very quickly it was dead as an oil town so hundreds would turn out to roam the countryside destitute and in that respect of heme and her children became microcosm of the feet of many more towns and communities across the southern queens the following year when the depression kicked in. 1929 after a series of some pretty incredible family tragedies, the burning down of their family home, the burning to death of his sister in another house fire, then near fatal burning of his fire and the incurs racial and slow death of his mother in the oklahoma state mental asylum she wasn't crazy, she had the undiagnosed and misunderstood huntington's disease. after all those tragedies woody

went to join his recuperating father in another boom to bust town on the texas panhandle and dropped of high school and became a sign painter, married, had his first two children and then they all waited through the years and carried the black blizzards of dust out and across the great plains. this was the war not topsoil of over 100,000 square miles of ravaged farmland. november 1933 the dust. the midwest and came back the following year and buried the midwest again and also as far east as albany and buffalo new york and the dust continued to blow for the rest of the decade. the sky would turn black and red with thousands of tons of dust, animals and people choke to death, toddlers wander out into the dust drifts in the suffocate and the single worst day that any of the dust bowlers could remember was april 14th 1945,

palm sunday they called a black sunday and that is when the wind of more than 80 miles per hour with the topsoil and the red clay from as far away as nebraska dumped it on the already dying town that in the texas, and he recalled that when the dust cloud hit it looked like an ocean was chomping down on the snail like the red sea was closing in on the israel children he said and the baptist and pentecostal religious fundamentalists believed this was literally the end of the world, this was god's judgment being visited upon the wicked people and as he recalled, we thought we was done for, thousands of bus packed up and led out and in that year he rode the first of many songs about the death of his community and hundreds of others like it across the southern plains. ♪ i've sung this song and i will

sing it again about place that i lived on the west texas place in the city of tampa the county peers what all of the people have to say. they say so long, been good to know your ♪ ♪ so long it's been good to know you ♪ ♪ salonga, been good to know you ♪ this dusty dust storm is getting my home, and i've got to be drifting along. that dust storm hit them like thunder and trusted us over and thus the thus under ♪ ♪ blocked out the traffic, blocked out the sun ♪ ♪ street home the people did run saying so long, been good to know you ♪ ♪ so long good to know you ♪ so long been good to know you

♪ this dusty old dust storm is getting my hold and i've got to be drifting along ♪ ♪ now the sweethearts they sat in the dark and they sparked they kissed and hugged and that dusty old dark they side and they kissed but instead of marriage they was talking like this ♪ ♪ will so long, honey, and good to know you ♪ ♪ so long been good to know you ♪ so long been good to know you ♪ this dusty old dust storm is getting my home and i've got to be drifting along ♪ ♪ now the telephone rang and jumped off the wall ♪ ♪ that was the preacher making his call and he said this may be the end you've got york last chance of salvation from san ♪ ♪ of the church was jammed, the

church was pact ♪ ♪ that the steel dust storm blew so black preacher could not read a word of his text ♪ ♪ so folded his specs ticking collection saying so long it's been good to know you ♪ ♪ so long, a been good to know you ♪ ♪ so long been good to know you ♪ this dusty old dust storm is getting my home and i've got to be drifting along ♪ ♪ well now that was the dusty old dust storm that ever did blow and most everybody took to corrode and they looked down that highway fast as could go and they all sang these words so long it's been good to know you ♪ so long it's been good to know you ♪ ♪ so long been good to know you

♪ discuss the gold dust storm is getting my home ♪ ♪ and i've got to be drifting along. [applause] >> he left his wife and his children be there for the first or the last time and he hit the road early in the summer of 1937 as he would have been about 24-years-old and somewhere out there on those highways leading westward among the jalopies and the wagons piled high on the furniture there was another oklahoma native they called her sis cunningham and she would sing with pete seeger and like woody and other children of the

dust bowl should become radically politicized by hurt migratory experience. as she recalled along with other hundreds of thousands of dirt farmers we fought to survive we fought the hundred and illness without doctors and the washes and hailstorms, the death of livestock. now we could have endured all of those normal disasters, but there was no way in god's world to east cape the shark's teeth of the bankers and that's what happened and woody remembered the further west you walk, the browner, the hotter, stiller and emptier the country gets. i met the hard rock miners desert rats and hold swarms of hitchhikers and migratory workers swat with their little piles of belonging in the shade of a big sum boards out across the flat hard crust gravelling

desert. kids chasing around in the sun, leedy is cooking scrappy meals and buckets and scouring the plates clean with sand work pants, slacks, cotton dresses, they gather around us and they would sing, too. but sometimes they just stand real quiet and listen, and i knew what they was thinking about. well, by 1936 the year of roosevelt's terse reflections of a first family farm had a pretty well blown away with the topsoil that's the way that they describe it in his biography. a human convulsion of epic proportions was in progress to read the whole countryside seemed to achieve and grown as the farms emptied and the highways filled. on the country music stations jimmie rodgers was of their yodeling and singing the california waters taste just like cherry wine.

and woody and half a million migrants from the dust bowl region called their way westward to those legendary and vineyards and orchards of california and what they're doing is chasing a dream come something that was the leader on called the stoneking thing i've ever run on two and this was the promises of expenditure plan unscrupulous contractors and, for the unaware of the crisis and decided to exploit it by floating the dust bowl region with handbills like this promising work for every idle hand, hundreds of thousands need to pick peaches and the grapes and the select apricots and prunes. they didn't need hundreds of thousands. the need a couple thousand this in particular periods of time so you could work up the implications for wages to could engineer the crisis where you have a couple hundred chasing a couple thousand jobs. what they would do, these labor contractors would give the address of someone who may give you a job of an california and

he would have to give this person fight for $10 just to get the address not knowing whether the job was there or not so he was incensed by this and then falling prices like this and the dream of for correcting it, for the border the migrants were stopped cold. los angeles police department panicked you see they set up these highly illegal, highly unconstitutional road blocks on the major points of entry into the state of california and they called it the the bomb blockade and thinks of the "los angeles times" and william randolph hearst and the chambers of commerce and this huge anti-immigrant block now before the trip to the states i'd never been to california but can i share a secret with you? i had seen a donnymac to read and i am pretty sure los angeles is about as far west as you can get. what was the l.a.p.d. doing sitting in a legal roadblock hundreds of miles to the east

stopping them from coming to the state of california as the wood were a foreign country and where does their jurisdiction in the? long island? i don't get it. any way it was unconstitutional and they didn't care about it. what they were doing is stopping and turning back anybody that looked unemployable. that's the words they used. how could you prove you were not unemployable? you would reach into your pocket and pulled out $50 if you can show $50 of the old border guard you might make it into the golden state of california where you would be sure to get in less than warm welcome to do so he took a look at that situation and said kind of a musical postcards to the folks home thinking of pulling up stakes and coming back to california maybe they'd better think again. ♪

♪ lots of folks back east say they're beating that hold art just the way to the california line ♪ ♪ across the desert sand a role getting out of that old testable they think you're coming to a sugar bowl here's what they will find ♪ ♪ the police the point of entry say york number 14,000 for the day ♪ ♪ and if you ain't got the domini ♪ ♪ i tell you, if you ain't got that dough ray me you better go back to tactless texas, oklahoma, tennessee ♪ ♪ california is the garden of eden, it's a paradise to live in or see. but believe it or not ♪ ♪ to you won't find it so hot if you ain't got that dough ray me

♪ now you want to buy a home or farm that can't do nobody no harm ♪ ♪ take your vacation by the mountains or the seas but you better not swapped your cowal or karkh you better stay right where you are, take this little tip from me ♪ ♪ because i look through the want ads everyday and the headlines in the paper always say ♪ ♪ you ain't got that old dough ray me ♪ ♪ then you better go back to beautiful texas, oklahoma, kansas, texas, georgia, tennessee ♪ ♪ california is a garden of eden ♪ and it's a paradise to live in or see ♪ ♪ but believe it or not you

won't find it so hot ♪ ♪ if you ain't got that dough ray me ♪ ♪ >> he made it into the state of california and was there that he encountered for the first time the word oakie and was an insult being used to describe the migrants from the southern plains utter infantry were from oklahoma or not to read those who work in them no white discriminate between oakie and arkies and texies and things like that the formula might like this if you're poor, white, homeless, unemployed and in california at that time, you were in oakie no matter where you came from and enough, if you're poor, black, homeless, unemployed, and california at that time and from california

you were a oakie, the white underclass and as i see the target of a really hysterical highly orchestrated campaign of the statewide xenophobia so it's an atmosphere in which if you went to a movie theater in bakersfield or somewhere in the valley you might be met with the synnott side that said negros and oakie upstairs at least one record has posted a sign saying no negros, dogs or oakies served. as it's in that atmosphere he began serving around the camps around 1938, and this is where he began to run for the radicals that had a sense of the bigger picture as they saw. and again, as joe klein describes it in his biography, he says these old radicals around the campfire mudder have coherently about the capitalist, the rich bastards, and then they would reach into their pocket and pulled out a battered old

red card that proved they had been members of the wildest most violent julius and completely disorganized gang of redds ever to strike fear into the hearts of the american bourgeoisie to read industrial workers of the world. i.w.w.. a lot of people think that they were wiped out in the great red scare of 1919, 1920. we weren't wiped out, we just want to wait for the invention of the internet. so it's i.w.w. and you can pay by direct debit. anyway, and the infected guthrie with their humor and cynicism and anger but particularly the songs they sang out of their little red songbook to fan the flames of discontent and all of the songs in that book the ones that woody would have loved the most are the 26 parody's priceless the funny written by

joe hill, swedish born immigrant to the united states who became a martyr to the cause of american labor with his execution on a very dubious murder charge in the state of utah in 1915. students of american history, labor history will be aware of this during a telegram that he sent to his colleagues the night before his execution he said don't waste time mourning for me. organize. fewer people will be aware that he said this in the same telegram can you do me a favor when this is over can you promise you'll get my body across the state line because i don't want to be caught dead in utah. will the year before his death, joe wrote a pamphlet no matter how good is never read more than once but a song's learned by heart and its repeated over and over so that is the sort of first lesson that he told the woody guthrie from beyond the grave and the second as he took a few cold common sense fax, put

it into a song and put them and dressed them up in the code of humor to take the dryness of of them. i think a lot of the people would think of joe hill's reworking of the oil salvation army him in by and by as a case in point. joe took it and turned it into what did become the anthem to american league for the first half of the 20th century the preacher and the slave they think that's why joe hill was executed for writing that song and. i will give you a little bit of that because it's kind of important. ♪ long haired creatures come out every night ♪ ♪ they tried to tell you what's wrong and what's right but when asked how about something to eat ♪ well, they will tell you invoices so sweet ♪

♪ you will eat, by and by ♪ and that the glorious land up in the sky ♪ ♪ work and pray and live on hay ♪ you will get by in the sky when you die ♪ very influential as long in american labor and on woody guthrie. [applause] well, woody got himself a job posting and singing on the progress of radio station in los angeles and the date is wrong it couldn't have been earlier than 1937. but as i said, he also began to circulate around the migrant camps and some of these were the cause that it shall please is set up by the government and these were great places to be. they were democratically run, self-governing, they were well provided for, clean and sanitary the the only problem was there wasn't nearly enough of them to cope with the magnitude of the dust bowl crisis in california's

of the majority of the camps that he would have visited or slums. they call them hooverville anywhere across the country they were it is named after the president on whose watch. the depression was ushered in and these are places where you may be headed families of say eight or ten getting by on $3 a week between them picking cotton in the sandbox team valley. back east president roosevelt declared if i want to work in factories the first thing i would do is to join a union which sounded pretty good coming from the oval office but don't think any president had gone so far to endorse the rights of labor to organize. but even with that backing the reality for the migrants and to organize in the californian fields they were crushed time and time again because the losses, the fruit crop growers hated unions formed by working people. they were happy to form their

own unions. what is a chamber of commerce but a union, what is the manufacturers association but the union? the frear crop growers have their own union they call themselves the associated far worse whose aim is to stamp out american activity among the farm labour because if you're a worker for verney union you are an american. here are three of the associated farmers in kern county california engaged in the un-american activities of their choice which is book burning, the burning of the copy of john steinbeck's the grapes of wrath as soon as it is published in 1939 because you see, they don't come out so good in the books of its kind of extreme and when they were not book burning they were hiring local thugs and giving them ex handles from baseball bats, sawed-off shotguns, billy clubs, maybe a tin badge to make them feel sort of authentic, sending them out to scatter the picket lines to bust out union meetings to burn

down and burn a lot in tire migrant camps and assess the need union organizers and this is with a grateful thinks of the l.a.p.d. and the "los angeles times" and this huge anti-immigrant block. so woody took a look at the situation and controlling part of the grapes of wrath have any of you have red grapes of wrath or seen the film? you remember the preacher casey, the ex preacher who becomes a union organizer and is subsequently and consequently murdered by the vigilantes' in higher of the associated farmers ♪

♪ ♪ have you seen that vigilante man ♪ ♪ have you seen the vigilante man ♪ ♪ have you seen the vigilante man ♪ ♪ i've been hearing his name all over the land ♪ ♪ lonely nights down in the engine house ♪ ♪ sleeping just as still as a mouse ♪ ♪ manly come along chase's us out in the rain and ♪ ♪ was that the vigilante man

♪ and malae truffle round from town to town ♪ ♪ traveled around from town to town ♪ ♪ they heard us like a wild herd of cattle ♪ ♪ was that the vigilante man ♪ you know preacher pc was just a working man ♪ ♪ so they killed him in the river, some strange man ♪ ♪ was that the vigilante man ♪ tell me why does the vigilante

man ♪ ♪ why does the vigilante man carrying a sawed-off shotguns in his hand ♪ ♪ what he should his brother and sister down ♪ ♪ have you seen that vigilante man ♪ ♪ have you seen the vigilante man ♪ ♪ have you seen the vigilante man ♪ ♪ i've been hearing his name all over the land ♪ [applause] there's something interesting happening about now. woody is beginning to listening

to the radio critically ill the migrants are gathered around the one retial and he's listening along with them and for instance he's hearing of a great big hit of the years in 1938, his hero's taking field baptist hymn this world is not my home, which you may know to give you a sense of its sentiment. ♪ this world is not my home ♪ i'm just passing through ♪ my treasures and my hopes are all beyond the blue ♪ ♪ where many christian children have trouble long before ♪ ♪ i've got no home in this world anymore ♪ he loved the carter family of course and he left american church music, but he hated the sentiments of songs like that. and i'm pretty sure for instance he would have had the little

angels joe hill and jumping on his shoulder saying woody come in a situation like this here's what i would do with that song if i was you. something like this. ♪ on the endicott milram thank you to ♪ i'm just traveling around going from town to town ♪ ♪ and the police make it hard wherever i may go ♪ ♪ and i ain't got no home in this world anymore ♪ thinks like that got the market joe hill all over it. now drink the depression, woody begins to get particularly angry at the songs that are coming out of the popular music industry, the great american song book which is top heavy with titles like that to the day on the sunny side of the street. i love this for a country pact with hoosier filled just an old shanty town and the worst criticism woody foot castillo

songwriter later on was no, it sounds penalty. i think that he overstates the case in his contempt for the industry because you look at the song and there are good songs coming out of the depression that do engage with the realities of the economic realities for instance. ♪ once i built a railroad, i made a race against time ♪ ♪ once i built the railroad now it's done ♪ ♪ brother, can you spare a dime ♪ great song. love that song. i think there are a few songs that manage to capture the hopelessness and the despair of the depression era but my point is that hopelessness and despair is the last thing that woody guthrie is out to corral because he's getting angry at this point. what he wants to corral is a murder that will lead to an

organized rebellion, reorganization of the social and the economic system. at this point he is dedicated to nothing less than the overthrow of american capitalism. this is the time when in contradiction to an approach like brother can you spare a dime, written by somebody that became a friend of his and cicione leader on the great associate and in contrast to that approach woody guthrie is beginning to get interested in the old of law ballots his mother used to sing when he was growing up in oklahoma. the border ballads in britain that take the highwaymen and turn him into this for the crusade for economic and social justice. this is the time woody is jogging into his notebooks i love a good man outside of law as much as i hit a bad man inside of the lobby and he starts writing his own balance. for instance he chooses as a subject in his most famous outlaw about what somebody who probably didn't deserve the

honor conferred upon him this is an old oklahoma petty thief bank robber sort of general all-around scumbag named charles r. fer floyd, pretty boy floyd. there is no record of evidence he had in the kind of social conscience whatsoever to read doesn't matter. he becomes somebody for whom digging for a diamond would be an act of self petrol but more importantly he takes on the responsibilities of capitalism and it's pretty boy floyd who observes some will lobby with a six done and some with a fountain pen. she begins writing about the british highwaymen who takes all the money and distributes it and spreads it equaled just like the bible and the profits of just. i think all of his outlaw balance the one that shows which way he is going is an of labour what written about somebody who is a plain old working man and perhaps the world's first socialist to read as he puts

into the mouth of one of his characters in the autobiographical novel down for glory, she's got these clothes sitting around a campfire with a box car or something like that and one crisis to devotee else i will tell you one thing if jesus christ was sitting right here right now he would say this same thing. he would tell you we all just have to work together, build things together, cleanout old self together, fix up old things together and owner things together. they will call us something bad that jesus don't care if you call it socialism or communism or just me and you and i think it's significant his ballot of jesus christ makes the connection with the holy of law even stronger because he bases the tune and the format, he rips off 100% lockstep and beryl the tune and the format from the american out about what jesse james.

♪ jesus christ was a man who traveled through the land. he was a hard-working man ♪ ♪ she said good out with the poor so they lead jesus christ in his grave ♪ ♪ jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand ♪ ♪ with followers true and brave ♪ but that dirty little coward they called judas shelia de jesus christ in his grave ♪ ♪ he went up to the preacher and he went up to the sheriff ♪ ♪ and he told them all the same ♪ he told them that the poor

would one day when the world ♪ ♪ that's why the lead jesus christ in his grave ♪ ♪ the people of the land took jesus by the hand ♪ ♪ and they followed him far and wide ♪ ♪ he said i, not to bring peace, no i come to bring a sword ♪ ♪ so they killed jesus christ ♪ jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand with followers true and brave ♪ ♪ but that dirty little power that they called judas when he lead jesus christ in his grave ♪ ♪ and the people held their breath when they learned about his death ♪ ♪ and everybody wondered why ♪ it was the landlords and the lawyers and the soldiers that he hired ♪ ♪ but nailed jesus christ in the

sky ♪ ♪ this song was written down in new york city ♪ ♪ av richman and preacher and sleeve, and if jesus preached today like he preached in galilee ♪ ♪ they would leave jesus christ in his grave. jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand with followers true and brave ♪ ♪ but that dirty little covered the called judas with a leader jesus christ in his grave ♪ ♪ there is an unrecorded verse written down in his book, hard hitting songs for hard hitting people ♪ ♪ if the love of the poor should one day turn to hate and the patience of the workers stays away it will be better for you rich if you had never been poor

♪ because you fleet jesus christ in his grave. jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand with followers true and brave ♪ ♪ but that dirty little power to the called judas ♪ ♪ the lead jesus christ, lead jesus christ in his grief ♪ [applause] [applause] that song was indeed written in 1940 and was the end of an era because the previous year president roosevelt announced the great social experiment of the new deal was being officially wound up and the government's resources were being redirected to concentrate on increasingly shall we say global issues.

so it's the bitter cold new year's of 1940. woody guthrie is decided to make new york city his home and he's hitchhiking north and east out of texas. and it seems on every car radio and every rowhouse jukebox he hears what appears to him to be the latest self righteous complacent patriotic offering from tin pan alley. this is 3940 pete smith singing god bless america. there are two ways of reading that song. you could read it as the first hint and fearful hope of a russian jewish immigrant to the united states who is watching nervously the rise of fascism in europe and praying that it will not hit here. that is and how she saw it. he saw it as yet another unbelievable assertion from the industry that there could

possibly be and other foley solution to reflect problems. he hated the song so much that he sat down and wrote an angry song in response to it and it became his most popular. nearly 30 years later after he finally died from the huntington's disease he inherited from his mother and which had progressively silenced him throughout the 1950's and the early 60's his son arlo recalled the irony of that history and said i remember him coming home from the hospital and taking me out to the backyard just him and me and teaching me the last three versus two this land is your land because he thinks that if i don't learn them no one will remember them. he can barely strummed a guitar at this point and his friends think that he's crazy and stick to many ruminant. then when he can't write or talk a all anymore he hits it big.

all of a sudden everyone singing his songs. kids are singing this land is your land and schools and people are talking about making it the national land fund. bob dylan and all those others are copying him that he can't even react to it. the disease doesn't affect his mind. she's sitting in a mentor institution and he knows what's going on but he can't tell anybody how he feels or what he thinks. well this land is your land began with the title god bless america. you will see that it's a god bless america and it contains a couple of cover anticapitalistic versus i don't remember seeing in school, do you? [laughter] a lot of americans never heard them until january of 2009 when pete seeger and bruce springsteen and sang them from the steps of the lincoln memorial at the inaugural concert the next day newspapers across the country say that's the way he wrote it? yeah, that's the way woody wrote this. so i will leave