Login for FavoritesJosh White - Uncle Sam Says / Southern Exposure
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Album Details
- Artist: Josh White
- Single: Uncle Sam Says / Southern Exposure
- Label: Keynote
- Year of Release: 1941
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on 2011-06-19 CharlesMartel Said:
When Josh White performed " Uncle Sam Says " for the first time, word got to President Roosevelt who invited White to the White House to perform and then spoke to him at length about his life afterwards. It is not hard to see why. " Uncle Sam Says " targets the hypocrisy and stupidity of the racism then prevalent across the US and how it wormed its way into the US military
"Airplanes flying across the land and sea,
Everybody flying but a Negro like me.
Uncle Sam says, "Your place is on the ground,
When I fly my airplanes, don't want no Negro around "
" The same thing for the Navy, when ships go to sea
All they got is a mess boy's job for me
Uncle Sam says, "Keep on your apron, son,
You know I ain't gonna let you shoot my big Navy gun "
"Got my long government letter, my time to go
When I got to the Army found the same old Jim Crow
Uncle Sam says, "Two camps for black and white"
But when trouble starts, we'll all be in that same big fight"
"If you ask me, I think democracy is fine
I mean democracy without the colour line
Uncle Sam says, "We'll live the American way"
Let's get together and kill Jim Crow today"
Given that the US was about to enter a war against a philosophy which believed that some people were inferior because of the colour of their skin, the hypocrisy must have stunk the place up. White delivers his civil rights plea - remember this is a plea to be allowed to be sent to die for his country with the same dignity and respect as anyone else - with calm and measured tones. He doesn't get angry, he doesn't need to. Anyone with more than one functioning brain cell can see that the justice and humanity of the point he is making is so stark and obvious.
White went on to become one of the earliest and most consistent of the civil rights blues singers of America, for which he was labelled a Communist by the ignorant McCarthyist right. Still, he lived long enough to see Kennedy finally take on the Jim Crow laws and bring some measure of decency to American society.
Rating: 8/10
