'Wasn't that a Time:' Pete Seeger and Folk Song Activism in the Cold War Era, 1948 - 1972

From the mid-1950s through the early 1970s the folk musician and social activist Pete Seeger played an important role in American society. From his upbringing in the labor movement and in radical artistic circles, he believed that through song artists could effect positive social change in their environments. His career having a reached a height during the Cold War, Seeger sang and played his signature long-neck, five-string banjo within the folk quartet the Weavers. Committed to folk song as social activism, the Weavers sang for peace, racial equality and integration, and tried more broadly to break down social barriers along the lines of race, class, gender, and nation prominent during the Cold War era of fear, homogeneity, and distrust that proliferated throughout American culture. During the red scare the Weavers disbanded having been blacklisted and Seeger was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for his radical affiliations. Seeger faced-off with HUAC in a seven-year legal battle to defend his freedom to hold any opinion he wished, even a potentially subversive one, because he argued that so great was the freedom of thought permitted in American society. After winning this battle, Seeger threw himself and his music into the 1960s social movements for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam. He mentored a number of up-and-coming young folk singers, the "new folks," as they, too, sought to combine music with social justice activism. In Seeger's later years he turned his efforts toward the local and environmental, using music to help clean up New York State's polluted Hudson River. Throughout these years Seeger mobilized music to draw people together in brotherhood and trust, to defend freedom, and to help forge a more just and equitable society by stirring his listeners to action for the common good.