"My Song Is My Weapon"

Robbie Lieberman is chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department and a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Kennesaw State University. She is the author of Prairie Power: Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student Protest and coeditor of Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement.

• Preface   xiiiIntroduction: Historical Background   31. The American Communist Movement Culture   142. From the "Final Cornflakes" to the "Ballad for Americans": Communist Musical Culture in the 1930s   253. "This Machine Kills Fascists": Communism, Antifascism, and People's Music during World War 2   504. "My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, the CPUSA, and the Cold War   675. "Songs of Labor and the American People"   856. "We Were Close to Changing the World": The People's Songs Hootenanny   1157. "The Fight for Peace": People's Songs and the Wallace Campaign   1268. "We Will Overcome": The Legacy of People's Songs   149Notes   167Index   193

"A spirited and scholarly account of the relationship between the US Communist movement and the folk music revival of the 1940s and 1950s."--Paul C. Mishler, Nature, Society, and Thought "Shows the ways in which the folk music revival of the 1960s and the participatory cultures of the civil rights movement and the New Left drew on the general example and the specific creations of the all-but-forgotten People's Songsters."--George Lipsitz, American Historical Review "Lieberman's vision of a people's music in American culture is arresting, challenging, and refreshing, and it deserves our attention." -- Phillip V. Bohlman, Sonneck Society Bulletin