Donald and Jackson are joined by historian Aaron J. Leonard, author of The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, The Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party USA 1939-1956, to discuss the folk-revival music scene that emerged within and around the American Communist Party in the mid-1930s and which continued through the early 1950s. We dive into the scene’s relationship with the Party’s changing strategy and platform, how Earl Browder related to this revival, the scene’s institutional development in the late-1940s, as well as the suppression and surveillance of its leading members in the immediate post-WWII period and beyond.
Cosmopod