Category Archives: James Taylor

The Spirituals and the Labor Movement

W.C. Handy, the so-called “Father of the Blues,” once said on a radio broadcast that he was always inspired by the spirituals and that the spirituals did more for the slave’s emacipation than all of the guns of the Civil War.

I’ve spent the past few years examining the influence of the spirituals, Freedom Songs, gospel songs, R&B songs, and the hymns of Isaac Watts on the Civil Rights Movement. And people like Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga) have echoed Handy’s words as they relate to another fight, 100 years later.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me to discover that the spirituals were used by African Americans in the labor movements of the 1920s and ’30s as well, when the Federal government used American soldiers to slaughter strikers and corporations controlled entire blocs of states, not just their representatives.

This research path has taken me to “New Masses,” “The Labor Defender” and other feisty newspapers and magazines from that era. And in an article on the lynchings in the U.S. in 1933, there is an account of what black Share Croppers Delegation at the Farmers Second National Conference sang that year, to the tune of the spiritual, “We Shall Not Be Moved:”

“We fight against the terror/We shall not be moved/We fight against terror/We shall not be moved/Just like at tree that’s planted by water/We shall not be moved.”

Which brings me to my favorite James Taylor song, “Millworker,” written for a musical version of Studs Terkel’s “Working” project. Few songs move me as powerfully as this:

Now my grandfather was a sailor
He blew in off the water
My father was a farmer
And I, his only daughter
Took up with a no good mill-working man
From Massachusetts
Who dies from too much whiskey
And leaves me these three faces to feed

Millwork ain’t easy
Millwork ain’t hard
Millwork it ain’t nothing
But an awful boring job
I’m waiting for a daydream
To take me through the morning
And put me in my coffee break
Where I can have a sandwich
And remember

Then its me and my machine
For the rest of the morning
For the rest of the afternoon
And the rest of my life

Now my mind begins to wander
To the days back on the farm
I can see my father smiling at me
Swinging on his arm
I can hear my granddads stories
Of the storms out on lake eerie
Where vessels and cargos and fortunes
And sailors lives were lost

Yes, but its my life has been wasted
And I have been the fool
To let this manufacturer
Use my body for a tool
I can ride home in the evening
Staring at my hands
Swearing by my sorrow that a young girl
Ought to stand a better chance

So may I work the mills just as long as I am able
And never meet the man whose name is on the label

It be me and my machine
For the rest of the morning
And the rest of the afternoon
Gone for the rest of my life