Conformity and Challenges in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Years 373written by Leadbelly. In 1955, as noted, he was called before HUAC to answer
for his political views. Like Paul Robeson years before, he did not shrink and
defiantly responded, “I am not going to answer any questions as to my asso-
ciation, 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 com-
pulsion as this... .” Though Seeger’s conviction was overturned, his career
remained dormant for nearly a decade as he had to deal with political con-
troversies rather than make music.
Similarly damaged was Josh White. White was an African-American folk
singer who became a close friend of President Roosevelt. Still, his songs about
American racism and human rights violations of Blacks got him into trouble
with the McCarthyites and he too became a victim of the Red Scare. Accused
of being a Communist without any evidence of that, his career suffered ter-
ribly. Odetta Holmes, known to the world by her first name, was another
African-American folk legend, proclaimed by Martin Luther King to be the
“Queen of Folk Music.” She too sang songs about race and social issues, and
was one of the best-known protest singers of the early 1960s. Indeed, the folk
revival of the late 1950s would be vital to the development of 1960s protest
music. As noted, Malvina Reynolds wrote a scathing satire of the suburbs with
“Little Boxes,” and another song, “It Isn’t Nice,” mocked liberals as too cow-
ardly to stand up for freedom like blacks in the south were doing [“It isn’t
nice to block the doorway/It isn’t nice to go to jail/There are nicer ways to
do it/But the nice ways always fail”]. Tom Lehrer and Tom Paxton, who would
find greater fame in the 1960s, got their starts in the previous decade. Lehrer
wrote satirical songs about nuclear war [“Who’s Next”], the space program
[“Werner Von Braun”], military intervention [“Send the Marines”], social
issues [“Smut”], and religion [“The Vatican Rag”]. Paxton wrote one of the
more potent songs of the era, ridiculing the conformist nature of education
with “What Did You Learn in School Today?” [“I learned our government
must be strong/It’s always right and never wrong/Our leaders are the finest
men/And we elect them again and again/That’s what I learned in school
today/That’s what I learned in school”]. By 1960, folk had been reborn at
the forefront of social protest music. In the next decade, it would explode as
artists like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, and a skinny kid from Hibbing, Minnesota
whose birth name was Robert Zimmerman entered the national scene.