The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #154347   Message #3623130
Posted By: GUEST,Monica Wister
30-Apr-14 - 10:00 AM
Thread Name: Biography: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
Subject: RE: New Book: Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans
So far as I know there is no standard biography of Seeger that dedicates 122 pages (a full 25,000 words) expressly to this one aspect of Seeger's long life. And yes, the book (with extensive footnotes) contains a number of documented revelations, among them that none other than Robert Kennedy, upon his appointment as attorney general, insisted upon the Justice Department's proceeding with Seeger's prosecution, despite the fact that the Justice Department under under the conservative Republican administration of Eisenhower had ignored the case since (per the requirements imposed by a 1956 contempt vote by Congress) charging Seeger and others in 1957, and had intended to eventually drop the case altogether. Other prosecutions stemming from the same Congressional vote of 1956 - among them the prosecution of playwright Arthur Miller - had gone forward almost immediately after charges were brought in 1957. The story behind Robert Kennedy's deep personal involvement in the Seeger prosecution is just one of the items of "news" in the book.