5. His protest songs included songs about racial segregation on The Titanic and a rabble-rousing attack on Adolf Hitler
Although he described himself as apolitical, Leadbelly’s music tells another story. Life in the Jim Crow South made him a passionate and outspoken advocate of racial equality and rights in song. One of his signature tunes was an interpretation of a folksong about the African-American boxer, Jack Johnson, being refused passage on The Titanic because of his ethnicity, which of course turned out much better for him than those on board. ‘Jack Johnson heard the mighty shock/ Mighta seen the black rascal doin’ the Eagle Rock/…/ Black man oughta shout for joy/ Never lost a girl or either a boy’.
Events over in Europe were also hard to ignore, and the fifty-something Leadbelly even voluntarily signed up to go and fight in WW2. Though never drafted, he also penned a tune against the maniacal Adolf Hitler which expressed sympathy for the Jewish victims of his atrocities. ‘When Hitler started out, he took the Jews from their homes/ That’s one thing Mr. Hitler you know you done wrong’. It also seems that Leadbelly saw in this common enemy a chance for American people of all colours to unite: ‘We American people say “Mr. Hitler you is got to stop!”‘
