Little Known Fact: Woody Guthrie Was a Big Ol' Racist

Was Woody a poseur? You can say that...he was trying to build a singing career, and he found that cultivation more of a "hick" persona really worked, especially when he was in NYC. You'd be hard pressed, though, to find many white Americans of his generation who WEREN'T coming from a racist background. The fact that he transcended his raising and re-invented himself is to his credit. It's easy from a 21st century viewpoint to view racism as "other", but it was the norm until recently, and stubbornly refuses to disappear. Woody was a womanizer, a song thief (which he freely admitted) and was afflicted with a fatal disease that can cause dementia. However, he managed to put into words the feelings of an entire generation of the dispossessed, and cast his lot with the have-nots. When the writer of this article has had a similar positive impact on the world, I'll be happy to reassess his work

This article is ignorant crap, a testament to either the writer's inexperience with life itself and general ignorance, or perhaps his ability to write anything that will gain him a fast buck, despite the disrespect it will generate among informed people.  Guthrie never claimed he belonged to the CP and made it a point of saying he didn't.  However, he faithfully followed the twists and turns of the CP from the late 1930s on, stood up to the witchhunt when he could have found success as an entertainer and writer had he not, and was publically identified with it, writing regular in its press for more than a decade.  The writer is so ignorant about this that he takes Guthrie's faithful following of the CP's line changes on WWII to be some personal foible of Guthrie, when, unfortunately, millions of people around the world deluded that Stalinism equaled socialism, followed the same twists and turns.  None of this is a secret or required this hack to expose it.

Can Whiteside show the antiracism of all of his forbearers.  Guthrie never claimed he was a born socialist, antiracist or fighter for workers rights,  He also never hid he came from a middle class family with deep involvement in the Democratic party when it meant the party of segregation.  Yet, the writer doesn't explain that the middle class gloss of Guthrie's family disappeared in the face of his mother's suffering from the same illness that felled Guthrie and his father's financial and political disasters and from teenage years Guthrie lived a poor life, often shuffled off the relatives in Texas. 

The essential fact of Guthrie's life is in the late 1930s, Guthrie was inspired by the sturggles of California industrial and agricultural workers for unions and justice to decide that he had to join this fight and he transformed himself into an opponent of the racism and other reactionary ideas he had grown up with.  I believe many of the political and cultural ideas Guthrie and his cothinkers advanced were fundamentally politically and culturally conservative, but his heart was invested with what he got from identifying with the struggle for social justice and racial equality.  Every account of his conduct in the 1940s and 1950s even by people who hated him speak of his personal antiracism and his political antiracism.

This is trash.  One could write an article about me saying Tony Thomas is a Republican because I was one until about the junior year in high school, even though the bulk of my life has been spent as a member, a leader, and now a supporter of the Socialist Workers party.

This article is unbelievably embarrassing for the author who obviously did not do his homework. 

There's a sad and desperate ignorance to this piece. I'm not sure if you've ever taken a good, honest listen to Guthrie's songs. It may not burnish your hipster cred, but it might enlighten you. For example, look at "Union Prayer," recorded by Wilco and Billy Bragg:

"Will prayer give jobs at honest pay? Will prayer bring stomach full of food? Will prayer make rich treat poor folks right? Will prayer take out the Ku Klux Klan?

Will prayer cut down the hoodlum bands? Will prayer stop the lynchbug hands? If all of these things my prayers can do, I’ll pray till I am black and blue.

If prayer will bring us union love, I’ll pray and pray and pray some more. I’ll pray all day from door to door And fall at nite to pray some more My prayer with a union label."

Hardly the words of a racist.

Whiteside has done an excellent piece of journalism here. The facts are all verifiable and true. The spin is the thing that makes this so interesting. It's clear the writer doesn't like Woody and he manages to put together a string of facts that support his disdain. Anyone who is upset by this should read the Joe Klein biography, which documents most of this. There are others as well to check out. The other piece on Woody's life in L.A. that came out more recently nails Woody's intent when the writer points out that Woody was most interested in furthering his career. That's not to say he had no convictions. But, he was always trying to make a successful career in music and that often came before facts in his storytelling and songwriting. 

I'm glad L.A. Weekly has chosen to stir up some truth about Woody. The real guy is far more interesting and compelling than the myth. 

This article is a Big Ol' Pile O' Excrement. Repent yet Jonny Whiteside? How about you L.A. Weekly editors? This is about as bad as it gets (hopefully).

By the way, "Run, Nigger, Run" is a pretty ubiquitous song, collected from both black and white sources. The subject of the song is a slave running for freedom. Some versions are overtly racist, and some are sympathetic. Pete Seeger sang it as "Run, Chillun, Run" and other variations include "Run, Boy, Run" and "Run, Slave, Run." There's quite a bit of commentary at Mudcat Cafe: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=29237. But, hey, it's a piece of American folk music, and nobody cares about that.  

If Woody Guthrie was indeed racist, he was the product of a racist society, and one doesn't have to look far to see virulent racism throughout this country and its media prior to the Civil Rights Movement. What bothers me is the snarky tone of this article. I've not paid much attention to LA Weekly in the past few years. My return to it is disappointing indeed. I'm finding articles and attitude that are far more worthy of Fox News than what used to be one of the most enlightened periodicals in this town. 

FYI, dimwitted, neo-nazi troglodytes like you are not "normal."

"I ain't a communist, necessarily, but I been in the red all my life."

PS, his dad went bankrupt when he was a kid after property values went to shit from the dustbowl. He was born middle-class then got very well acquainted with being poor after his daddio lost his 'fortune'. Fact checking apparently died the day web news was born.

That's his name, actually. Johnny Whiteside. He was the LA Weekly country and roots writer for years. Major credibility in the bizz, did beautiful pieces on Waylon, among a zillion others. The players dig the guy which is saying something as musicians do not dig journalists as a rule (and rightly so....) Like most good writers he has an edge and you might not agree with everything he's written (he's loathed Woody Guthrie as bogus for years, not to mention the whole North east folkie scene that came up a generation later) but he's a true believer in genuine rock'n'roll, country and everything else that sprung up from the soil. Personally, I think he's off the mark on Woody. But I dig Johnny Whiteside, he taught me the ropes of the biz when I began at the Weekly way back in 2004, and is one of the coolest guys I ever met in journalism, a profession not exactly brimming with cool guys. That being said, the cat is a nut. Ha! Luv ya Johnny.... Brick brickwahl.com

Nor sure why all the quotes around his name, but that's his name, actually. Johnny Whiteside. He was the LA Weekly country and roots writer for years. Major credibility in the biz, did beautiful pieces on Waylon, among a zillion others. The players dig the guy which is saying something as musicians do not dig journalists as a rule (and rightly so....) Like most good writers he has an edge and you might not agree with everything he's written (he's loathed Woody Guthrie as bogus for years, not to mention the whole North east folkie scene that came up a generation later) but he's a true believer in genuine rock'n'roll, country and everything else that sprung up from the soil. Personally, I think he's off the mark on Woody. But I dig Johnny Whiteside, he taught me the ropes of the biz when I began at the Weekly way back in 2004, and is one of the coolest guys I ever met in journalism, a profession not exactly brimming with cool guys.  That being said, the cat is a nut. Ha!   Luv ya Johnny....   Brick     brickwahl.com

like some other posters, i thought this was an article from the onion. guess not. guess the joke's on "johnny whiteside"

Fucking idiot. Why would you even bother replying to what I wrote? Only stupid people would waste time doing so. Please contract a deadly disease and die, but not before spreading it to everybody you know. Thanks.

Sorry about the block of text. I thought I'd separated that into paragraphs, I assure you.

What an insipid, misleading headline for an unfocused, sensationalist hit piece of an article. "Hey everybody, I read somewhere online that Woody Guthrie was a racist when he was young! Aren't they celebrating his birthday around town? Hmmm... that gives me an idea! I can take that bit of trivia and get paid to pretend I'm writing a critical observation of current events AND history all at once! Wait up, let me check the indexes of some Guthrie bios on Amazon for the word ' Nigger.' Sweet! Confirmation! This took all of ten minutes!" But perhaps I'm being unfair. There's no evidence to suggest Mr. Whiteside wrote this simply because he noticed that there were Guthrie celebrations going on around town. I apologize. That is very unfair - to Whiteside's boss who probably came up with the idea to write about the Guthrie centennial in the first place. Well, tell you what, here's a direct quote from the far superior 2011 article you cited from The Guardian:"It was in California that Guthrie's eyes opened to his own racism, according to the book. It details a turning point in 1937, when Guthrie – after he had played the appallingly racist song Run, Nigger, Run on the air – received a "politely incandescent" letter from a young black college student. Guthrie was so shaken by it, he read out the letter on the airwaves the next day, apologised profusely, ripped the song sheet to shreds and swore he would never use the N-word again. He went on to become one of the most committed civil rights activists of his generation."Funny how it can provide the same information and then some without putting the phrase "Big Ol' Racist" in the title. The other thing I'd like to point out is how open minded a guy like Guthrie must have been to re-examine the long-held beliefs he'd been raised with based on a single friendly letter somebody wrote to him, and then to publicly proclaim his new unpopular conviction over the air. Would that we were all like that. I'll gladly let you call me a "Big Ol' Racist" if I could have some of that real-life drive to live the examined life. 

Must have been hard not to have some mixed emotions about blacks in the 30s or 40s. Everywhere you looked there were all sorts of reminders that blacks weren't considered equals. Segregated dining establishments, restrooms, schools, and drinking fountains. How could one not develop, at the very least, a sense of two different societies. I know little about the man but to be able to change such attitudes later in life is the story here. This article should have been titled " Folk Legend Overcomes Racist Upbringing To Become The Voice For The Common Man"

his is a strange piece. It pretends to be a huge scoop, but cites biographies that have been around for decades documenting Woody's racism. To me what's significant about it is that he changed when he learned from Blacks, when he was called on it. The article makes his change from racist to anti-racist opportunist, whereas I see it as an model of how racists. The other strange thing is the simplification of Woody's class. He's a perfect example of the contradictions of class among white people in the US. His dad was a klansman (a well known fact always mentioned in every bio) who was ambitious, a typical white entrepreneur of the frontier, but like most he failed miserably. The big house he built that they lived in only a short while burned down, Woody's mother was out of control with undiagnosed Parkinson's (what Woody died of), and was committed to the state insane asylum. The father, broke, left Okemah (the article doesn't even spell the town's name right) for west Texas, Woody followed, and they nearly starved there. The description in this article of the class situation reveals a deep ignorance of class in the US, boom and bust, making it and failing. About the politics, I don't have the anti-communism gene to be shocked and offended by support for USSR . Woody was pretty typical of other US communists of the time. Most shocking is this author's willingness to accept the FBI's denial of Woody's CP membership rather than Woody's affirmation of it. J. Edgar, being J. Edgar certainly didn't want the CP to have any kind of popular face.

Worse article.  Ever.  The author needed to vent his anger about racism and picked an artist who had a major turn around and stood up for people of all races and walks of life. Poor research.  Poor writing.  Problem is, racism starts exactly this way:  By knowing little facts and finding an easy target.

All I can say is...when did the L.A. Weakly become such a fucking turd? I guess I haven't been paying close enough attention in recent years. These twerp "journalists" they have are really, y'know, like...edgy! Most of them seem to lack simple grammar and spelling skills, too, not to mention any brains. Who is this, some twat who just graduated the L.A. City College Journalism program? Yeah, maybe you fuckers oughta check your own shortcomings...with 75 pages of prostitution advertisements in every clammy, scummy issue. 

Guthrie recreated himself and our cukture thru his music. He had the courage to admit he was wrong then dedicated his life to shining a light on inequality and greed The curse that is destroying this country He was a mighty wordsmith who changed our world- not a mediocre journalist With a juicy spin on history

why is everyone upset? yeah he started off as a racist but by the end of his life didnt share the same views he did when he was a young man. how many of us can say in retrospect that the decisions we made years ago were ones that showed maturity and understanding? Respect the man for his music but dont get mad because the musician you love had a dark past. The most important thing is he didnt remain the same

This is one of the stupidest and missinformed articles I have ever read. Is it satire and I don't get it? Yes, Guthrie was brought up to be a racist, like most other white people around him at the time and in the area. But contrary to most he learned that he was wrong and was very anti-racist once he realised this, at a time, where segregation and racism were "normal" and actually only the Communists seriously fought racism. Then, he hardly ever had the conmfort of his own bedroom since he was a teen as his father went broke and his mother was hospitalzed for good because she had Corea Huntington.

Amazing the author, the character assassin, "Jonny Whiteside", grudgingly notes, after snidely and dumbly berating Woody for choosing a KKK official for a father, that Guthrie's most famous, most mature, and least youthful songs flew in the face of his upbringing, his immature songs and the racist thoughts reflected in his youth.  He was an Okie hick of 25 when he wrote that anti-black POS in 1937.  It is his later work, like "This Land is Your Land", that we venerate him for, as if it's the real national anthem, which it should be, written by a man who evolved and shed his racism, no small step considering 50 years after the civil rights movement, racism is as rich among conservatives as ever, while Guthrie was intelligent enough to see the error of his upbringing and kiss off his racist conservativism 20 years before.  As he did his faith in Stalin in the 50s, as most American Communist sympathizers did, once Khruschev revealed the depth of Stalin's crimes to the world.  He also never made any claim that the slogan on his guitar came from anywhere else but the New Deal, despite your dirty assertion he did.  Damn him if he hadn't evolved, "Jonny", not, as you do, despite the fact he did.  You can take any figure rightly famous for their adult work and find attitudes and statements that stemmed from their youth that their mature work flipped on its head.  You make it sound as if Guthrie changed out of LACK of conviction, a LACK of personal growth, and a lack of realizing we're all a brother and sisterhood, a fact i learned at a young age thanks to the likes of Woody Guthrie.  It is your ugly journalism that should be remembered from your smarmy piece, until you, too, grow up.

Nothing of the sort should be done in honor of a racist prick, especially in Los Angeles. My guess is that out of state trust fund transplant wannabe-angeleno hipsters are responsible for the events in honor of this faggy-folk racist musician.