Episode 37. No More Slavery Chains
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I woke up this morning intending to produce an episode on French Glamour. Because I had been keeping my head in the sand over the past several days, I was not aware how the situation in Minneapolis had escalated since the last time I had checked in. I quickly realized that I could not in good conscience proceed as if this catastrophe wasn’t happening. On the other hand, I defer to those on the front lines to speak of their own experience and truth. I offer solidarity with those who rage and mourn, and a program of protest songs ranging over the course of the early twentieth century to the present day. We hear from a wide range of singers, from Donny Hathaway, Micki Grant, Pete Seeger, Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, to Joan Baez, Nina Simone, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Paul Robeson, and Marlene Dietrich. If you don’t want to hear a political program, for goddess’s sake, keep away, but if you do want to be infuriated, engaged, and uplifted, please listen in.
RECORDINGS HEARD IN THIS EPISODE
Keedron Bryant: I Just Wanna Live
Abel Meeropol with the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, whom he and his wife adopted after their parents were executed by the US government 
Billie Holiday
Abel Meeropol: Strange Fruit. Billie Holiday [live 1959 television performance]
Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam [live at Carnegie Hall 1964]
Woody Guthrie: Pastures of Plenty. Odetta
Marc Blitzstein: Joe Worker (The Cradle Will Rock). Micki Grant [from CBS-TV broadcast of Stage Three, November 1964]
Joe Hill 
Pete Seeger
Joe Hill: The Preacher and the Slave [Pie in the Sky]. Pete Seeger
Alfred Hayes 
Paul Robeson
Earl Robinson, Alfred Hayes: Joe Hill. Paul Robeson [1949 live performance for Scottish miners]
Earl Robinson, John Latouche: Ballad for Americans. Paul Robeson; Nathanael Shilkret, Victor Symphony Orchestra, American People’s Chorus
Bob Dylan, Hans Bradtke (German words): Die Antwort weiss ganz allein der Wind [Blowin’ in the Wind]. Marlene Dietrich; Burt Bacharach
Stephen Stills: For What It’s Worth. Cher
Neil Young: Ohio. Crosby, Still, Nash & Young
Prince: Baltimore. Prince, featuring Eryn Allen Kane
Jonas Myrin, Jay Landers, John Shanks, Barbra Streisand: Don’t Lie to Me. Barbra Streisand
Joan Baez: Nasty Man
Paul Simon: Bridge over Troubled Water. Aretha Frankllin
Nina Simone, Weldon Irvine: To Be Young, Gifted and Black. Donny Hathaway
Micki Grant: So Little Time (Don’t Bother Me I Can’t Cope). Micki Grant
Traditional Spiritual: No More Slavery Chains for Me. Shirley Verrett; Leonard De Paur
Martin Luther King, Jr.: We Shall Overcome Sermon
Pete Seeger: We Shall Overcome. Mahalia Jackson
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