The Protest Singer by Alec Wilkinson

Author:Alec Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Alec]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-27237-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE COMMITTEE GREW IMPATIENT with Seeger's intransigence. Tavenner tried once more to have him identify himself in the photograph. Walter directed him to answer. “The same answer, sir, as before,” Seeger said.

When Scherer said, “We are not accepting the answers or the reasons you gave,” Seeger said, “That is your prerogative, sir.”

“Do you understand it is the feeling of the committee that you are in contempt as a result of the position you take?” Scherer asked.

“I can't say,” Seeger said.

Seeger testified for nearly an hour more, with no deviation from form. At one moment the committee appeared to think it had cornered him, because he had said that he sang for “everybody.” Well, if for everybody, then Communists among them?

“My answer is the same as before.”

“What is that?” Walter asked.

After consulting with his lawyer, Seeger said, “I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them.”

Before much longer Tavenner said, “I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman,” and Chairman Walter said, “The witness is excused.”

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