Pete Seeger

The activist song writer and singer-aged 94-died this past week in his home in New York close by the Hudson river he helped to save (at least to some extent).  His songs and his life showed a deep concern for the injustice in our country and for the oppressed and marginalized.  He was involved in labor, peace and civil rights movements.  Some of his more well known songs were; "We Shall Overcome", "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "The Hammer song" and "Waist Deep in Big Muddy" (an anti Vietnam war song that CBS censored in 1967).
During the 1930' and until 1949 he was a member of the Communist Party in the US.  In 1993 he said "he would like to see a world without millionaires".  He served in the Army Special Services during WWII entertaining US troops in the South Pacific.   In 1950 he was compelled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee where he refused to answer their questions and was held in "contempt" of Congress, serving only a "few hours" in jail, but being blacklisted from TV for the next 17 years.  He was also an environmentalist and worked for the clean up of the Hudson river.  He continued his singing and protesting by coming out against the Iraq War and by his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.
His musical instrument of choice was the banjo-which he called a "machine"-and "the Hammer song" summed up his life and music.
If I had a hammer
Id hammer in the morning
Id hammer in the evening
All over the land/ Id hammer out danger
Id hammer out a warning
Id hammer out a love between my brothers and sisters
All over the land.
Seeger's belief that in the face of injustice one "must do what one can do" to oppose it, and his own epitaph  he wrote:
And so keep on while we live
Until we have no more to give
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger.
(Source:  "He did have a Hammer" by Jim Berkerman of The Record 1/29/14)