Folk Music Still Has Lessons For Us

I grew up in a period of upheaval, maybe not as destructive to our democracy as now, but the issues were still very serious. World War II, the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassinations of the leader of that movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., a beloved President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and his brother, Robert Kennedy, who was then Attorney General and a candidate for President.

Coinciding with those events were related songs, and many of the lyrics are still relevant today. The authors are noted after the verse.

If only it were true:

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

And that’s what I learned in school today,

That’s what I learned in school. (Tom Paxton)

Please:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin' (Bob Dylan 1964)

Now, what do we have:

Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a prisoner whose face has gone pale
And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why
And there but for fortune, may go you or I (Phi Ochs)

Hard to forget:

As through this world I’ve wandered

I’ve seen lots of funny men

Some will rob you with a six-gun

Some with a fountain pen. (Woody Guthrie)

Today we have ICE:

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are filed in their creosote dumps
They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border
To take all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Roselita
Adios mes amigos, Jesus e Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees. (Woody Guthrie)

In Hope:


I've seen my brothers working,
Throughout this mighty land,
l prayed we'd get together,
And together make a stand. (Les Rice)