Archie Green | |
|---|---|
 Archie Green at home, ca. 1993; photograph by Hazen Robert Walker | |
| Born | Aaron Green June 29, 1917 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| Died | March 22, 2009(2009-03-22) (aged 91) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Folklorist |
Archie Green (June 29, 1917 – March 22, 2009)[1][2] was an Americanfolklorist specializing in laborlore (defined as the special folklore of workers) and Americanfolk music. Devoted to understandingvernacular culture, he gathered and commented upon the speech, stories, songs, emblems, rituals, art, artifacts, memorials, and landmarks which constitute laborlore. He is credited with winning Congressional support for passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act of 1976 (P.L. 94-201), which established theAmerican Folklife Center in theLibrary of Congress.[3]
Born Aaron Green inWinnipeg,Manitoba he moved with his parents toLos Angeles, California in 1922. He grew up in southern California, began college atUCLA, and transferred to theUniversity of California at Berkeley, from which he received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1939. He joined theCivilian Conservation Corps and spent his year of service in a camp on theKlamath River as a road builder and firefighter. He then worked in theSan Francisco, Californiashipyards and served in theU.S. Navy duringWorld War II. He was a member of theUnited Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America for over sixty-seven years and was a Journeyman Shipwright. His pro-labor orientation owed much to his upbringing. His parents were Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants fromChernigov, where his father had participated in the uprising against the Russian czar in 1905. When that revolution failed, they escaped to Canada. In the U.S., Green's father, a socialist, supportedEugene V. Debs, the campaign ofUpton Sinclair for governor of California in 1934, and became a supporter of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt'sNew Deal. While living in Los Angeles, Green regularly heard political speeches in Pershing Square. Describing himself as an "anarcho-syndicalist with strong libertarian leanings," or a "left-libertarian,"[4] Green combined a sensitivity for working people, an abiding concern for democratic processes, and a pragmatic willingness to lobby for reforms. He spent his career not only collecting material from laborers, but encouraging workers themselves to document and preserve their own lore.
In 1942 Green purchased the albumWork Songs of the U.S.A. performed by folk singerHuddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter. His love of music and especially the song "Old Man" sparked his interest in folkloristics, but it was to be nearly two decades before he returned to formal academia.
Green enrolled in graduate school in 1958, earning an M.L.S. degree from the University of Illinois in 1960 and a Ph.D. in folklore from theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1968. He combined his support for labor and love of country music in the research that became his first book,Only a Miner. In the same period he recorded "Girl of Constant Sorrow," an LP of songs sung bySarah Ogan Gunning, the sister of coalminer, songwriter, and labor leaderJim Garland. Green joined theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1960, where he held a joint appointment in the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations and the English Department until 1972. Working as a senior staff associate at theAFL-CIO Labor Studies Center in the early 1970s, he initiated programs presenting workers' traditions at theSmithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife on theNational Mall, and from 1969 to 1976 he left academia to live in Washington, D.C., where he led the successful legislative campaign to enact the American Folklife Preservation Act.[5] He became known for his work on occupational folklore and on earlyhillbilly music recordings. In 1975 he joined the faculty of theUniversity of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Bingham Humanities Professorship at theUniversity of Louisville in 1977, and was aWoodrow Wilson Center fellow in Washington, D.C., in 1978. His articles have appeared inAppalachian Journal, Journal of American Folklore,Labor's Heritage,Musical Quarterly, and other periodicals and anthologies. He retired from the University of Texas at Austin in June 1982, and established an archive for his collected materials in theSouthern Folklife Collection at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In retirement from teaching, Green continued to write and publish the results of years of research. He completed books on the tinsmiths' art, using examples from northern California (Tin Men, 2002); a monograph on millwrights in northern California over the 20th century (2003); and a collection of essays on the Sailor's Union of the Pacific (2006).
Also notable was the 2007 publication ofThe Big Red Songbook, featuring the lyrics to the 190 songs included in the various editions of theIndustrial Workers of the World'sLittle Red Songbooks from 1909 to 1973. Green inherited the project from John Neuhaus, a machinist and Wobbly a (member of the Industrial Workers of the World) who devoted years to collecting a nearly complete set of the IWW songbooks and determining what music the songs had been set to. When Neuhaus died of cancer in 1958, he gave his unique collection of songbooks, sheet music and other materials to Green, who vowed to carry on Neuhaus's vision of a complete edition of IWW songs. Green deposited Neuhaus's original materials in the folklife archive at the University of North Carolina.[6]
At home in San Francisco, Green served as secretary of the nonprofit Fund for Labor Culture & History. Founded in July 2000, the Fund has worked with theNational Trust for Historic Preservation to identify labor landmarks in San Francisco and install commemorative plaques, supported the publication of books onroots music, labor songs and historic labor landmarks, prepared guides to films on skilled union craftsmen, and helped theUnited Mine Workers restore theLudlow Monument in Colorado.[7] A visit to Archie Green's home often began with his salutation, "Greetings, fellow worker." He would always assist any researcher or student, but he would likewise always find something for them do go out and do. Green also brought together unionists, activists, scholars, and artists in "Laborlore Conversations," a series of conferences onworking class culture. Green was unable to attend the fourth of these conferences in August 2007, where he was honored with the Living Legend Award from the Librarian of Congress.
In 2011, University of Illinois Press published Sean Burns' biography of Archie Green entitledArchie Green: The Making of a Working Class Hero.[8] The biography, which argues that the trajectory and accomplishments of Green's life can importantly challenge and expandCommunist Party-centered histories of thePopular Front, received the CLR James Book Award for 2012 awarded by the Working Class Studies Association.[9]
Archie Green died ofrenal failure at his home inSan Francisco, California on March 22, 2009.[10]
