Friday's Labor Folklore 
Con Carbon, Minstrel of the Mine Patch

Pete Seeger, John Handcox & Joe Glazer at the Arts Exchange

 

Roll the Union On!
John singing with author Mike Honey.

 

 

Pete and John

 

Be of good cheer; be patient; be faithful.

And help the union to grow strong.

And if at any time you become the least discouraged.

Revive yourself by singing the good old union song.

 

-- Be Consolated

by John Handcox, 1937  

Remembering

 John Handcox

Union Poet and Singer

1904-1992 

John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition 

by Mike Honey  

 

John's Story 

 

  • Born to a family of 11 in the cotton country of Arkansas. 
  • Began picking cotton at age six, endured sharecropping and Jim Crow.
  • Helped to organize the interracial Southern Tenant Farmers' Union.
  • Run out of Arkansas as a lynch mob was forming.
  • Wrote over a dozen poems and songs for the tenant farmers' union -- poems about sharecropping and about labor organizing.
  • Disappeared from music and poetry for nearly fifty years when Joe Glazer and Pete Seeger invited him to the Great Labor Arts Exchange in 1985.
  • Received the Joe Hill Award in 1989 by the Labor Heritage Foundation.  
  • Shortly before he died Seeger and Glazer sang at a special labor tribute to John in San Diego, John's home town.
The Heritage of Southern Labor
  Guy Carawan   James Orange       John Handcox     Candie Carawan  Anne Romaine
Great Labor Arts Exchange
1985
John's Songs
Raggedy, Raggedy Are We
Mean Things Happening in this Land
Roll the Union On
(then scroll down)
Thanks to Mike Honey.               Photos by Larry Rubin.