Editing Pete Seeger (section)

===Early activism===
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the [[Young Communist League, USA|Young Communist League]] (YCL), then at the height of its influence. In 1942, he joined the [[Communist Party USA]] (CPUSA),<ref>{{cite book |last1=Reineke |first1=Hank |title=Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie |date=2023 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=9780806193588 |series=American Popular Music |volume=10 |page=42}}</ref> but left in 1949.<ref>{{harvnb|Wilkinson|2009|pp=116-117}}: Seeger later commented, "Innocently I became a member of the Communist Party, and when they said fight for peace, I did, and when they said fight Hitler, I did. I got out in '49, though. ... I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. My father had got out in '38, when he read the testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they were forced confessions. We never talked about it, though, and I didn't examine closely enough what was going on. ... I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no idea how cruel a leader he was."</ref>

In early 1941, while still only 21, Seeger started performing as a member of the [[Almanac Singers]] along with Millard Lampell, [[Cisco Houston]], [[Woody Guthrie]], Butch Hawes and [[Bess Lomax Hawes]], and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of [[Phonograph record#78 rpm disc developments|78s]] on [[Keynote Records|Keynote]] and other labels: ''[[Songs for John Doe]]'' (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), ''[[Talking Union]]'', and an album each of sea shanties and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, ''Songs for John Doe'' was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines, such as "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]]'s unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]], which maintained that the war was "phony" and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time, as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the [[History of the Communist Party USA#1935–1939: Popular Front|Popular Front]], which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt and [[Winston Churchill|Churchill]]'s [[arms embargo]] on [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Loyalist Spain]] (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xTKvo-cXv3EC&q=Roosevelt+refusal+to+aid+Loyalist+Spain+mistake|first=Robert|last=Dallek|title="'Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945"'|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1995|page=180|access-date=August 28, 2012|isbn=9780199826667|archive-date=February 2, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240202002332/https://books.google.com/books?id=xTKvo-cXv3EC&q=Roosevelt+refusal+to+aid+Loyalist+Spain+mistake#v=snippet&q=Roosevelt%20refusal%20to%20aid%20Loyalist%20Spain%20mistake&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, which, under its owner, [[Henry Luce]], had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' ''Songs for John Doe'' album, accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J.P. Morgan war". Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste", though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly, as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government [[Carl Joachim Friedrich]], an adviser on domestic propaganda to the United States military. In a review in the June 1941 ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'', entitled "The Poison in Our System", he pronounced ''Songs for John Doe'' "strictly subversive and illegal", "whether Communist or Nazi financed", and "a matter for the attorney general", observing further that "mere" legal "suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison,<ref>[http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm "The Poison in Our System" (excerpt from the ''Atlantic Monthly'') by Carl Joachim Friedrich] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603002452/http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm |date=June 3, 2013}}. Note: Dunaway misses the significance of military propagandist Carl Joachim Friedrich, when he mistakenly refers to him as "Karl Frederick," an error other writers who relied on Dunaway repeated.</ref> the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.<ref>Friedrich's review concluded: "The three records sell for one dollar and you are asked to 'play them in your home, play them in your union hall, take them back to your people.' Probably some of these songs fall under the criminal provisions of the Selective Service Act, and to that extent it is a matter for the Attorney-General. But you never can handle situations of this kind democratically by mere suppression. Unless civic groups and individuals will make a determined effort to counteract such appeals by equally effective methods, democratic morale will decline." Upon United States entry into the war in 1942, Friedrich became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council for Democracy, charged with combatting isolationism, and had his [http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm article on the Almanacs] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603002452/http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm |date=June 3, 2013 }} reprinted as one of several pamphlets which he sent to radio network executives.</ref>

While the U.S. had not officially declared war on the Axis powers in mid-1941 (and would not do so until the Pearl Harbor attack that December), the country was energetically producing arms and ammunition for its allies overseas. Despite the boom in manufacturing this concerted rearming effort brought, African Americans were barred from working in defense plants. Racial tensions rose as Black labor leaders (such as [[A. Philip Randolph]] and [[Bayard Rustin]]) and their white allies began organizing protests and marches. To combat this social unrest, President Roosevelt issued [[Executive Order 8802]] (the Fair Employment Act) on 25 June 1941. The order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at which time the Communist Party quickly directed its members to get behind the draft and forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war—angering some leftists. Copies of ''Songs for John Doe'' were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.<ref>Although the Almanacs were accused – both at the time and in subsequent histories – of reversing their attitudes in response to the CPUSA's new party line, "Seeger has pointed out that virtually all progressives reversed course and supported the war. He insists that no one, Communist Party or otherwise, told the Almanacs to change their songs. (Seeger interview with [Richard A.] Reuss 4/9/68)" quoted in William G. Roy, [http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/8/1/2/pages108124/p108124-1.php "Who Shall Not Be Moved? Folk Music, Community and Race in the American The Communist Party and the Highlander School," ff p. 16]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090302214224/http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/8/1/2/pages108124/p108124-1.php |date=March 2, 2009 }}</ref> The Almanac Singers' ''Talking Union'' album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by [[Folkways Records|Folkways]] (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year, the Almanacs issued ''[[Dear Mr. President (Almanac Singers album)|Dear Mr. President]]'', an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, "Dear Mr. President", was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his lifelong credo:

{{poemquote|Now, Mr. President,
We haven't always agreed in the past, I know,
But that ain't at all important now.
What is important is what we got to do,
We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do,
Other things can wait.

Now, as I think of our great land ...
I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday,
Just give us a little time.

This is the reason that I want to fight,
Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right.
No, it's just the opposite: I'm fightin' because
I want a better America, and better laws,
And better homes, and jobs, and schools,
And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like
"You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro,"
"You can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"
"You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."

So, Mr. President,
We got this one big job to do
That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through,
Let no one else ever take his place
To trample down the human race.
So what I want is you to give me a gun
So we can hurry up and get the job done.}}

Seeger's critics, however, continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated ''Songs for John Doe''. In 1942, a year after the ''John Doe'' album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York ''World Telegram'' (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and [[Henry Luce]]'s right-hand man, [[C. D. Jackson]], Vice President of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, had founded "to combat all the Nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist" antiwar groups in the United States).<ref>Blanche Wiessen Cook, ''Eisenhower Declassified'' (Doubleday, 1981), page 122. "The Council was a limited affair," Cook writes, "... that served mostly to highlight Jackson's talents as a propagandist."</ref>

After returning from WWII service, Seeger and others established [[People's Songs]], conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts and designed to "create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People".<ref>People's Songs Inc. People's Songs Newsletter No 1. February 1946. [[Old Town School of Folk Music]] Resource center collection.</ref> With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, [[Henry A. Wallace]], who ran as a third-party candidate on the [[Progressive Party (United States, 1948)|Progressive Party]] ticket. Despite attracting enormous crowds nationwide, Wallace did not win any electoral votes. Following the election, he was excoriated for accepting campaign help from Communists and fellow travelers, such as Seeger and singer [[Paul Robeson]].<ref>American Masters: "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song – [[KQED (TV)|KQED]] Broadcast 2-27-08.</ref>