Using Music to Teach About the Great Depression
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Social Education 71(1), pp. 15–20 ©2007 National Council for the Social Studies Using Music to Teach about the Great Depression Robert L. Stevens and Jared A. Fogel In 1932, one out of four Americans was out of work, and the banking system was promising, and muses bitterly that after near collapse. The Great Depression is typically taught through history textbooks, all the sacrifices he made to achieve the but the music of this time allows students to learn about this era through different American Dream, he is reduced to stand- perspectives. ing in a bread line “bumming” change from other unfortunates. No song captures the gloomy spirit of ...Once I built a railroad The Great Depression witnessed many the Great Depression more than “Brother I made it run musical styles—from the light hearted- Can You Spare a Dime?”, written for a Made it race against time ness of popular music to the sadness of the Broadway musical, “New Americana,” Once I built a railroad blues, gospel, which offered inspiration, which flopped. Two days before the Now it’s done to the tension between populism and the musical closed, Bing Crosby stepped Brother, can you spare a dime? popular front. Americans who suffered into a studio and recorded his version the deprivation of the times sang lyrics of the song, with his melodious baritone, This stanza describes how the that reflected their plight. No one style which would prove to stand the test of American Dream came crashing down of music has been more intricately woven time. The lyrics juxtapose the optimism on the song’s antihero. He recalls his hard into the political culture of the times than of the American spirit with the grim reali- work and patriotism, reminisces about the blues. Blues music was sometimes ties of the times: former times when the future looked also referred to as the “Roosevelt’s Blues,” because so many songs conveyed politi- cal commentary on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was president for the greater part of the Depression.1 African Americans and the Photograph by Deb Palmer Depression The Great Depression hit almost all Americans, but it hit African Americans especially hard. They had been on the bottom rung of the economic ladder before the Depression hit, and, although most had precious little to lose, pros- pects for even subsistence work were especially poor once the Depression was under way. Unemployment in the “prosperity decade” had been much higher among blacks than whites. “The Negro was born in depression,” Clifford Burke told Studs Terkel (a Chicago radio personality of that era, who remains an J ANUARY / F EBRUARY 2 0 0 7 15 All photography taken at the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC. The second room of the Memorial Photograph by Deb Palmer contains bronze statues by George Segal including people standing in a breadline (see page 15), and this one depicting a man listening to a Roosevelt “fire- side chat” on the radio. active historian and social commentator McCoy sang in his ‘Charity Blues’ that William Ledbetter, known as “Lead today). “It only became official when he would love to have a PWA job, which Belly.” Lead Belly was born on the Jeter it hit the white man.”2 The Depression would bring him money instead of the Plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana, made a bad situation even worse; by ‘beef and meat’ relief from ‘Mr. Charity on January 29, 1885, and then when he 1932, unemployment among blacks Man’ on ‘Charity Street’.”5 was five years old, he moved with his reached approximately 50 percent.3 Even As a result of the PWA, Roosevelt won parents to Leigh, Texas. His uncle first New Deal programs aimed at alleviat- by a landslide among blacks in the 1936 interested him in music by buying him ing joblessness and poverty fell short election. In September 1936, 20,000 an accordion. By the age of 21, Lead when it came to African Americans—the people filled Madison Square Garden for Belly left home and traveled throughout National Recovery Administration (cre- a re-election rally. Van Rijn writes that Texas and Louisiana, where he tried to ated in June of 1933 and presided over by 300 followers of Elder Michaux’s Happy eke out a living playing the guitar, and Hugh Johnson), whose sole purpose was Am I radio preacher program enlisted a also got jobs as a cotton picker, railroad to “restore employment and prosperity,” special train carrying 20 by 24 paintings worker, and other rough labor jobs when had done such a poor job with employ- of Christ, Lincoln, and Roosevelt titled his musical abilities failed to bring in ment and relief for African Americans “The Three Emancipators.” “Christ sufficient cash. that in the black community it became was termed the emancipator from sin; In 1916, Lead Belly was sent to jail in known as “Negro Run-Around” and Lincoln emancipator from bondage, and Texas on an assault charge. He escaped, “Negroes Rarely Allowed.”4 To counter Roosevelt the emancipator from social but two years later he was arrested again this situation, FDR appointed Harold injustices.”6 Though blacks had little on murder charges and sentenced to 30 Ickes, a progressive who had been access to political power in the 1930s, years hard labor in Huntsville, Texas. president of the Chicago branch of the African Americans used music to express Seven years later, Lead Belly managed NAACP to direct the Public Works dissent. to gain his release with a pardon from Administration (PWA). In Roosevelt’s Governor Pat Neff. Legend has it that he Blues, Guido Van Rijn notes that as a Music as Social Commentary was granted the pardon after appealing tribute to this program, “in August 1934, One of the greatest African American to the governor in a song. Mississippi-born blues guitarist Charlie blues songwriters at this time was Huddie Despite his success, Lead Belly was S OCIAL E DUCATION 16 arrested again in 1930 for attempted 1938 at the hands of a jealous husband. Tell him I ain’t made a penny all homicide and sent to the Louisiana State He writes of dislocation and the burdens this week. Penitentiary, where he met John and Alan of life in the 1930s. This dislocation and Tell him I’m just as broke as I can be, Lomax, ethno-musicologists who were migration in America was not just from oh just knock him down... gathering material at that time for their the Midwest to California, but from the Tell him I’ll have the money some- classic book, The Folk Songs of North South to the North, especially to Chicago. time. America. The Lomax father-and-son team “Even with the lack of employment in the recorded hundreds of songs and man- North, black migration from the rural The dreaded knock of the rent collec- aged to get Lead Belly once again paroled South amounted to some 400,000 blacks tor on his door calls to mind the fact that (either for good behavior or partly due during the Great Depression.”7 In “Sweet he is totally broke like everyone else and to the release of his most famous song, Home Chicago,” Johnson sings of set- can’t pay him, yet he lives in hope that “Goodnight Irene”). Lead Belly continued ting out with his meager possessions for one day his lot will improve. Williamson to create songs up to his death in 1949, Chicago, the “California” of impover- was murdered in 1948. being increasingly associated with leftist ished Southern blacks. Tampa Red, a blues singer known as the factions in the late 1930s. “Guitar Wizard,” recorded “Turpentine Lead Belly’s opinions and lyrics flow Oh, baby don’t you want to go Blues” in Chicago on May 7, 1932. The from his experience of being a member Oh, baby don’t you want to go turpentine business offered absolutely of a racial minority in the South. In one Back to the land of California, miserable working conditions for the of his earliest songs, recorded around the to my sweet home Chicago most underprivileged classes, who were time of World War I, titled “Red Cross the only ones willing to take on such jobs. Store Blues” (the Red Cross headquarters In “Ramblin on My Mind,” the theme Workers sweated in insect-infested pine in small American towns also served as of dislocation is linked to the theme of forests of the Deep South, cutting slashes army recruitment centers at the time), he love gone sour. The flight to the open into trees, and collecting the pine residue resists attempts to enlist him to fight. He road is associated with the leaving of a that flowed into cans pegged to the trees. tells his girlfriend, Justine, that he has woman for the arms of another, a recast- African Americans were often reduced no intention of enlisting, as the thought ing of the hope for a better future that the to doing jobs that were so distasteful of war and noble causes rings hollow to nation as a whole cherished in a scenario that even desperate whites wouldn’t do a man who has suffered hardships and of personal human relationships. “Cross them. Not only was this work hard and persecution all of his life in the very land Roads Blues,” his most famous song of all, miserable, but it was also insecure, with he is asked to defend. focuses on a life of misery always on the periods of employment infrequent, and Lead Belly claimed a repertoire of move.