FBI Interview With Woody Guthrie About Pete Seeger’s ‘Communistic Sympathies’ Revealed
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It was always safe to be right-wing in America, but left-wing, not so much.
When military investigators asked Woody Guthrie about fellow left-wing folkie Pete Seeger, the legendary singer kept a few things secret…
In the end, the departing investigator observed the cagey Guthrie “knew a great deal more about Subject’s politics and activities than he admitted.”
The details of the decades-old meeting appeared in 1,700 pages made public by the FBI from Seeger’s bureau file. The documents were made public through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The files run from 1942, when Seeger was a private in the U.S. Army, into the 1970s when the activist singer was a constant presence at protests and rallies from coast to coast.
Though the probe was done by the military, the details were forwarded to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Seeger, known for songs including “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” died in January 2014 at the age of 94.
The probe began after Seeger wrote the California American Legion to protest the group’s call for the post-Pearl Harbor deportation of all Japanese living in the United States.
“We’re fighting precisely to free the world of such Hitlerism, such narrow jingoism,” wrote Seeger.
By the time their investigation was done, a report cited Seeger’s “Communistic sympathies, his unsatisfactory relations with landlords and his numerous Communist and otherwise undesirable friends.”
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