Newly Released FBI Files Expose Red-Baiting of Woody Guthrie

There is a long-standing controversy about singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie’s exact association with the Communist Party, with some describing him as a free-spirited sympathizer and others representing him as a party member. For its part, the FBI, which had difficulty establishing Guthrie’s membership bona fides, settled on the view that, card-carrying or not, Guthrie was to be treated as a communist. This is what sustained and defined the files that the FBI kept for more than a quarter of a century on Guthrie, the Oklahoma-born folk musician whose pro-labor and anti-fascist songs played a defining role in the folk movement starting from the 1940s until his death in 1967.  Read more.