“Genuine Negro Songs, Collected by a White Man”
In 1936, Lawrence Gellert published Negro Songs of Protest under the auspices of the Communist Party–affiliated American Music League headquartered in New York City. Negro Songs of Protest included twenty-four lyric transcriptions and accompanying musical arrangements. The publication assembled striking statements of Black critique and rebellion likely to startle a white readership. With wit and candor, lyrics warned of the false promise of hard work and upward mobility under a racialized American political economy:
Pickin’ off de cotton,
Hoe-in’ up de corn,
I’m de lazies’ N——r sho’ as yo’ born.
M-m-m-m, ain’t dat de truth.
If N——r work hahd,
He worked out ‘fore long,
An’ Captain only want him when he stay strong,
M-m-m-m, ain’t dat de truth.
He work so hahd,
Jes’ fo’ getting’ ahead,
But he were crosseye, filled Captain’s pockets instead.
M-m-m-m, ain’t dat de truth.
De hahdes’ workin’ N——r
I ever saw,
Now goin’ ‘roun’ beggin’ can’t work no mo’
M-m-m-m, ain’t dat de truth.
Laborin fo’ white folks,
No matter what I’m doin,’
I’m de lazies’ N——r sho’ as yo’ born.
M-m-m-m, ain’t dat de truth.
Pickin’ off de cotton,
Hoe-in’ up de corn,
I’m de lazies’ N——r sho’ as yo’ born.
M-m-m-m, ain’t dat de truth.
Lyrics called out gross abuse in a landscape of injustice, and threatened a response:
Way down South, upon a rock quarr’l [quarry],
White folks chase N——r like chasin’ a squirr’l,
In Atlanta, Georgia,
In Atlanta, Georgia.
If you don’t get lynched you sho’ get pinched in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jes’ passin’ through, didn’t intend to stay.
Me an’ white folks don’t think de same way,
In Atlanta, Georgia,
In Atlanta, Georgia.
If you don’t get lynched you sho’ get pinched in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dey carry you to de jail house, make you get down on yo’ knees,
Feed you nothin’ except five year ol’ peas,
In Atlanta, Georgia,
In Atlanta, Georgia.
If you don’t get lynched you sho’ get pinched in Atlanta, Georgia.
I’m goin’ get me a pistol, hide behin’ a tree,
Shoot ev’rybody been messin’ with me,
In Atlanta, Georgia,
In Atlanta, Georgia.
If you don’t get lynched you sho’ get pinched in Atlanta, Georgia.
Same fo’ N——r ev’ry place down South
It just done happen I’m talkin’ about
Atlanta, Georgia,
Atlanta, Georgia.
If you don’t get lynched you sho’ get pinched in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Pickin’ Off De Cotton” and “Way Down South/In Atlanta, Georgia” are characteristic of the expressions of Black resistance collected within the book’s covers. At the time, readers saw only print transcriptions with formal musical arrangements. But, several of the songs—the two above, for instance—were also captured in audio and are stored among the more than five hundred items in Gellert’s field archive of more than two hundred recording discs at the Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University Bloomington (ATM).
Though difficult to hear, several of the verses in “Pickin’ Off De Cotton” are audible among the earliest of Gellert’s seven-inch aluminum field discs from the 1920s. Portions of “Way Down South/In Atlanta, Georgia” are available in digital reproduction as well from among both Gellert’s early seven-inch and later higher-quality ten-inch discs, suggesting that he encountered the song in multiple instances over time and place.1
With Negro Songs of Protest, Gellert achieved considerable acclaim. Time magazine profiled him approvingly. The New York Times credited the collector for unearthing a “new genre” of Black music dealing with “the realities of Negro life.” The NAACP organ, The Crisis, included a favorable notice of Negro Songs of Protest, funnily enough, in its “Books by Black Authors” section. In the National Urban League’s Opportunity, African American composer Hall Johnson contributed a glowing extended review. Johnson enthused about Negro Songs of Protest, a “modest little book,” he wrote, that showcased “two-dozen big little songs, so lovingly collected and so sincerely offered.” Hall concluded, “Here are some fine, genuine Negro songs, collected by a white man and arranged by a white man [composer Elie Siegmeister]” that “should claim and hold the attention of everybody in the world who is at all interested in how the world is getting on.”2
Notes
1 Lawrence Gellert, Negro Songs of Protest (New York: American Music League, 1936), 24–25. Gellert field recordings, “United States, North and South Carolina, Georgia, African Americans, 1920s—1940s,” Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University, Bloomington. “Way Down South/In Atlanta, Georgia” released commercially on Negro Songs of Protest: Collected by Lawrence Gellert, 33 1/3 rpm Rounder 4004, 1973.
2 “Songs of Protest,” Time, June 15, 1936, 51; H. Howard Taubman, “Negro Folksongs: New Genre Dealing with Everyday Life Produced, Particularly in South,” New York Times, July 5, 1936, X5; Arthur B. Spingarn, “Books by Negro Authors in 1936,” The Crisis 44, no. 2 (February 1937): 48; “Songs of Protest—A Review,” Hall Johnson, Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life 14, no. 8 (August 1936): 241, 244, 243.