Taking part in history
instead of teaching it

singer, spent considerable time in Britain sine past sum-
mer giving concerts in aid of the civil rights movement

In United States. Before leavin

for home last month she

was Interviewed by Rosemary Small of the Morning Star.

Below we reprint the text of this interview.

first thing Carolyn Hester
said to me was: “Gee, I
love coat! — I must
get one those while I’m in
_ England.” :
Tt was a pouring wet day and
“one of those” was one of those
shiny black macs. And that, in a
nutshell, is Carolyn Hester —
‘friendly and impulsive, warm-
hearted and open — plus a ready
smile, a soft American accent,
and long swinging hair.
Most of the “protest singers”
I have met have this quality of
open friendliness. No doubt it’s
their liking for humanity which
makes them want to use their

_ Voices against injustice to the

_ human race.

And, like other folk singers,
Carolyn has a feeling for and an
interest in social history.

“TI was going to be a history
teacher for a while,” she told me
at a hurried. meeting sandwiched
between two engagements dur-
ing her present tour of Britain,
“but that lost out to singing!
“Pe always sung, all my life,
_ and I just knew it was the only
thing I wanted to do.

“But my interest in history did

__ help me in folk music: there’s a

_ correlation between what hap-
trig to people and the way
_ it’s expressed in song.’~
: eke told me she is the
only professional singer of her
family — “though my aunt, my
_ mother’s sister, almost became a
professional _ singer,
mother says she would have
_ liked to be one. So I must be
_ working out her frustrated am-
bition!”

In the summer of 1964—“Free-

dom Summer,” when the great
battles for civil rights were
taking place in the Southern
states — she was asked if she
would go to Mississippi.

The civil rights movement had

—

and my .

CAROLYN’ HESTER

asked a number of folk singers
to become a sort of focal point
for the protests and = cam-
paign.

“In a way this oy me a
problem,” says Carolyn. “I’m
from Texas, and as you know,
we have our own difficulties in
Texas! I thought maybe it would
seem hypocritical of me to go to
Mississippi.

“But they said no, the civil
rights movement needed every-
one it could get in Mississippi;
all the emphasis was there and

all the effort was being put into

that area.”

So she went, and sang three
or four times a day while she
was there. When I asked her
about her experience, she said
simply: “It was war.”

There was a pause, and then
she added: “For the first time in
my life I felt what it was like
to be-under the threat of war.

“In Britain you know what

war is and how it feels to be .

dodging bombs, but we haven’t

experienced this in the states. .

It was a most desperate period.

OFF
Mi

* SHE WAS DISTURBING THE WAR!

“But also, it was the first time
that white people were welcom-
ed in the Negro part of town —
and, indeed, where they were
safest if they were working for
the movement!”

It was while Carolyn was in
Mississippi that the bodies of the
three murdered civil rights work-
ers were found — “the martyrs
of the movement,”

“TI decided—consciously, as an
artist — that I wouldn’t write a
song about this, because obvi-
ously there were going to be so
many songs about it.

“But: as a person I reacted so
strongly that. my song ‘Three

’ Young Men’ just came out.” :
This song bears out what she

says. It isn’t a formal story,

more a cry of emotion:

Three young men are sleeping
now:

The word has gone from town
to town. | .

One in the South and two in the
‘North;

A’ generation
down.
Carolyn added: “I don’t want

you to think this was all com-
pletely new to me. My mother,
works in the social security ad-
ministration in Austin, Texas,
and she deals every day with the
problems of Negro and Mexican
families, -so it wasn’t unfamiliar
to me.

“But it made me more aware
of the total implications of what
I was doing.”

So when, during a tour: of

is left bowed

Britain in March this year, she.

was asked to do a concert for
Christian Aid, she requested that
the proceeds should be allocated
to the Mississippi Delta Project.

“When Carolyn sings she illus-

trates in songs some of the con-

ditions in the Southern States.
Conditions similar to serfdom,
where fhe Negroes on the cotton
plantations are completely de-
pendent on the “boss man” who

employs them and owns the.

shacks in which they live.

-And where the annual average
Negro income is $157 (in a coun-
try whére anyone earning under
$3,000 a year is considered on
the poverty line).

Carolyn now writes many of
her own songs, mostly the pro-
test ones, but she doesn’t sing
exclusively protest songs: “I

don’t sing traditional music as

actively as I once did.”

Some non-protest favorities
among her British audiences
(shé has sung twice at the Edin-
burgh: Festival) are “East Vir-
ginia,” a traditional American
tune and “Dinks Song,” a Texas
blues.

As well as concerts and club
dates, she is making about ten
television appearances in Britain
before she leaves for home. d

“But I'll just be waiting. to
come back here again!” she said
with that friendly smile as we
said goodbye.

J. S. Wallace

As shy as a girl

Who has never been kissed
Bulgaria peeks

Through a curtain of mist.

J{ARGARET Fairley, Mervyn Marks and Avrom Yanov-
sky will remember from our trip 10 years ago, how a
young girl in Hungary showed us their railway, run

by children. One of us mentioned that children also ran a
model railway in the: Soviet Union.
proudly, “but theirs doesn’t run all winter.”

In Georgia they said with jest as we took off from
their sunny land: “It’s snowing in Moscow.” .

My little girl guide in Bulgaria is 19 and in her first
year of engineering, secure in the knowledge she’ll get a

“SOFIA

“Ah, yes,” she said,

job when she graduates. But back to the question of na-
tional e — or should I say national emulation? — under -

socialism .

She acied me pointedly: “You have many poems on
the Soviet Union. Are you going to have one on Bulgaria?”

ae eco
in photos and words

VIETNAM! VIETNAM! By Felix
Greene. Fulton Publishing Co.
‘Box -19}, Palo Alto, Calif.
$2.95.

CCORDING to a San Fran-
cisco columnist United Na-
tions Secretary General U

Thant purchased 150 copies of
Felix Greene’s “Vietnam! Viet-
nam!” for distribution among
key delegates to the UN.

U Thant must know his diplo-
mats and it must be his judg-
ment that the best antidote for
their particular occupational ail-
ment is something that is totally

devoid of the sophistry, the in- —

volved legalisms, the blend of
moral platitude and supposed re-
alism, the polite hypocrisy that
are the marks of ‘diplomatic
usage.

The first Virtue of Greene’s
work is that it is as different
from a diplomatic “White Pa-
per” as anything can be.

The first two-thirds of the
book present a photographic re-
port on Vietnam and its people,
the war to liberate the country
from the French colonialists, the
replacement of the French in-
vaders by the American, and the
record of U.S. intervention.

The major and most powerful

portion of this photographic re- —

port focuses on the war waged

_ by the U.S. against the Vietnam-

ese, first with native puppet
troops and then with the full
scale use of American men and
weapons.

Here is the stark record of
the torture, devastation, death
and cruelty inflicted upon the
Vietnamese people by U.S. arms.
Here is the stark confrontation
between a peasant people —
women, children, old men, he-
roic young fighters -- and the
monstrous mechanisms of death

- audience.

in the largest and most soph
ticated arsenal ever assembl
by any nation. _

It does no good to attempt
describe the photos, or. to pi
some out for special mention
one might do with painting
an art exhibit. They have to
seen, and the cumulative impact
of the pictorial record — thé
barbarity of it, the pain, thé
grief, the flashes of courage an@
human dignity,- the juxtapos!
tion of the sleek, technologi
death monsters and their hu:
manly frail targets — is beyon@
any of its single parts.

The photos — the things that
were (and are) actually done i?
Vietnam — constitute the mos
compelling moral indictment ye
assembled against U.S. aggres”
sion.

The written essay taking "4
the last third of the book,

a documented extension of. the
photographic record. It contains
no ‘new revelations,’ but
does offer the simplest, cleare
most succinct and direct su
mary of the war’s backgroun@
its actual conduct, and the
sues it presents.

The essay’s principal thrust
worth emphasizing. The war
not a civil war. It is not a W
of North Vietnam against Sou

Vietnam. It is a war of aggre

sion by the United States again
the Vietnamese people, and th
essential fact is not altered DY
U.S. ability to command pupP'
troops.

Greene candidly offers his
book as a presentation of the
case against the Administr
tion’s policies. It is the most &
fective such argument yet pr
sented for a mass audience. T
challenge is to reach th

—Al Richmond

December 2, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page