Lyrics and music of popular songs can represent alternative perspectives to the dominant ideologies of a particular time or place. As such, they can be used effectively in classrooms to provide the voices rarely heard in textbooks.

Song Lyrics as Texts to Develop Critical Literacy

Woody Guthrie – 1913 Massacre

Woody wrote this song around 1941. According to Pete Seeger, he read about the Italian Hall disaster in Mother Bloor’s autobiography We Are Many, published in 1940. (Woody’s own notes confirm that he got the idea for the song “from the life of Mother Bloor.”)

Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor was an eyewitness to the events at Italian Hall on Christmas Eve, 1913. A socialist and a labor organizer from the East Coast, Bloor was in Calumet working on the miners’ behalf with the Ladies Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners. She was greatly assisted in this work by Annie Clemenc, also known as Big Annie of Calumet — the “lady” in Woody’s song who hollers “‘there’s no such a thing! / Keep on with your party, there’s no such a thing.’”

The 1913 Massacre Film

 

Woody Guthrie Ludlow Massacre

Woody Guthrie wrote:

I made up these like I was there on the spot, the day and the night it happened. This is the best way to make up a song like this. When you read the life work of Mother Ella Reeves Bloor ‘We Are Many’ you will see this story of the Ludlow Massacre, you will be there, you will live it. Ludlow Massacre was one of the hundred of battles fought to build trade unions. I want to sing a song to show our soldiers that Ludlow Massacres must not ever come back to us to kill 13 children and a pregnant woman, just to force you to work for cheap wages.

[Wikipedia]

Mike Stout – The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Song

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, falling, or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria “Sara” Maltese.

“Ballad of the Triangle Fire / Bread and Roses”: A Yiddish language world premiere

In commemoration of the 146 young women who perished in The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and in homage to the pioneering role that women played in fostering political, social, labour, and economic reform in its aftermath, the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre proudly presents the Yiddish language world premiere of “The Ballad of Triangle Fire” and “Bread and Roses”.

Harlan County Wars

The Harlan County War, or Bloody Harlan, was a series of coal industry skirmishes, executions, bombings and strikes (both attempted and realized) that took place in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side and coal firms and law enforcement officials on the other.[1] The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. Before its conclusion, an unknown number of miners, deputies and bosses would be killed, state and federal troops would occupy the county more than half a dozen times, two acclaimed folk singers would emerge, union membership would oscillate wildly and workers in the nation’s most anti-labor coal county would ultimately be represented by a union.

Patty Loveless “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”

Pete Seeger: Which side are you on? – Song about the Harlan County War

“Which Side Are You On?” is a song written in 1931 by activist Florence Reece, who was the wife of Sam Reece, a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky In 1931, the miners and the mine owners in southeastern Kentucky were locked in a bitter and violent struggle called the Harlan County War. In an attempt to intimidate the family of union leader Sam Reece, Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men, hired by the mining company, illegally entered their home in search of Reece. Reece had been warned and escaped but his wife, Florence, and their children were terrorized.

Si Kahn – Aragon Mill

In the early 1970s, Si Kahn wrote a song lamenting the loss of mill village culture. Aragon, Georgia became a city due to the community growing around the mill.

Bread and Roses 1912 Lawrence textile Strike

Bread and Roses · Bobbie McGee

“Bread and Roses” is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song. It originated in a speech given by American women’s suffrage activist Helen Todd; a line in that speech about “bread for all, and roses too” inspired the title of the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim.

The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek for women, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence. On January 1, 1912, the Massachusetts government enforced a law that cut mill workers’ hours in a single work week from 56 hours, to 54 hours. Ten days later, they found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours.