|
The Labor Heritage Foundation presents the Joe Hill Award to people who, throughout their lifetime, have enriched the labor movement and the working class through their music and their art.
In the 1970s, in an interview with the United Mine Workers Journal
Si Kahn told a reporter, “I see myself as a singing organizer, not as an organizing singer.”
And he did organize, throughout his whole life. In 1965 he joined the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, he became a Vista volunteer, worked with the Mine Workers on the Brookside Strike and would go on to become the area director of the JP Stevens Campaign, remember the JP Stevens Boycott?
But wait. Let me pause here for a moment. In 1973, in Harlan County, Kentucky the workers went on strike against Duke Power who owned the Brookside mine, a story that was told was told in the documentary “Harlan County USA.” Si worked with the UMWA to organize support for that strike, especially in the Carolinas.
It was during the strike that Lawrence Jones, a 22-year-old union miner, was shot dead. Si Kahn - the singing organizer - wrote a song about him and he titled it “Lawrence Jones.”
A miner’s life is fragile
It could shatter just like ice
But those who bear the struggle must always pay the price
There’s blood upon the contract
Like vinegar in wine
And there’s one man dead on the Harlan County Line
From the river bridge at Highsplint
To the Brookside railroad track
You can feel a long strength building
That can never be turned back
The dead go forward with us
Not one is left behind
There's one man dead
On the Harlan County line
If that sounds to you like a ballad from the Southern Mountains, it’s because Si has been profoundly influenced by the traditional music of White and Black southerners.
In 1980 Si Kahn founded Grassroots Leadership, based in North Carolina, an organization he served for the next 30 years. And he is a founding member and lead organizer of the Musicians United to Protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
And so, I suppose the Labor Heritage Foundation could give Si Kahn the Joe Hill Award for being a singing organizer. But we are not.
Si, this evening we're presenting it you for being an organizing singer.
-- Remarks by Saul Schniderman on behalf of the Labor Heritage Foundation presenting the 2019 Joe Hill Award to Si Kahn at the Great Labor Arts Exchange.
| 
