"Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!": The Writings of Lee Hays (review)

Before all else, Lee Hays stands as a singer. His bass voice underpinned such seminal groups as the Almanacs and the Weavers—achievement enough to embed him in our collective cultural mind. Others may remember that he cowrote the songs "If I Had a Hammer" and "Wasn't That a Time," efforts also worthy of a place in our shared memory. However, many familiar with this work might not know about his other writing, which included plays, short stories, essays, poems, and humorous sketches. Robert Koppelman's "Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!" strives to present Hays as the multifaceted writer that he truly was.

Many of the selections included here should expand our view of Hays. Perhaps we already think of him as a man who championed causes, but when you read "Simon McKeever at Peek-skill," detailing the violence faced by him and the others attending the 1949 Labor Day Paul Robeson concert, we discover that Hays saw the unified struggle against repression and hate as a victory itself. After noting the faces of "these good-looking boys and girls with their printed signs, their screams, and the older men" who threw rocks at those leaving the concert, he writes, "If this was America it was not mine and I had no home but was alone" (p. 97). But, he realized, when those who were bloodied and battered began to sing and joke, they all had the "faith which could banish the jungle, put an end to a man's doubt, set the world to turning again, restore motion to life" (p. 99). His experiences and the prose that conveys them can inspire and move. Whether reminiscing about his union efforts in 1930s Arkansas or speculating about the importance of church songs in the labor movement, the nonfiction pieces included in this collection show Hays as a committed activist and informed member of the folksong community.

Even when he moves from fact to fiction, Hays can arouse a righteous fire in his readers. His short stories "Banquet and a Half " and "Booker Tee and Me" stem from Hays's own disdain for the racism he well knew from his own experiences in the South. Although Hays's characters speak in the simple vernacular of the folk, these fictional characters also come to subtly complex realizations about their own prejudices and those of their communities. Thus, this work stands as politicized literature, rather than pure polemic. Yet Koppelman does not shy away from Hays's politics. In fact, his focus on this aspect of Hays's life brings me to my first major criticism.

In his preface, Koppelman stresses, "For Hays, politics was more of an attitude, a recognition of larger forces at work, a historical perspective, and a commitment to building solutions to basic everyday problems" (p. xix). Yet in his overlong introduction, which fills a quarter of this book, he mainly focuses on how Hays was not a Communist yet was blacklisted for his involvement in leftist activities. However, the writings by Hays included in this collection seem uninterested in these subjects, and Koppelman himself admits that "Hays wrote very little about the blacklist" (p. 38). Nevertheless, the editor feels compelled to revisit Hays's 1955 encounter with the House Un-American Activities Committee, discussing it twice in his introduction (pp. 9–10, 37–8) and including a partial transcript of Hays's testimony in the chapter entitled "The 1950s" (pp. 116–20).

This oral section is not the only moment that belies the book's subtitle, for excerpts from Hays's taped reminiscences also appear. Although containing interesting moments, they are fragmented, as Koppelman himself notes. Thus, they do not show Hays at his best or as a writer, which is this collection's purported goal.

These inclusions surprise, because other important pieces are omitted. Where...