In a July 1949 article, titled "Songs of My People, U.S. civil rights movement and anti-war movement activist and protest folk singer Paul Robeson wrote the following:
"...Recent investigations have for the first time revealed a whole new field of Negro songs--songs of protest, songs directly calling the Negroes to the struggle for their rights, and against lynch-law, against their exploiters, against capitalists...
"A special place in the corpus of Negro songs is occupied by songs of protest, which were first collected in the southern states in the 1920s by the American journalist, L. Gellert. These songs manifest in full measure the Negro workers' heroic revolutionary spirit, their hatred of their exploiters, and their yearning for the struggle for their human rights and freedom...
"...Let me just say that under capitalist conditions, where all forms and expressions of American art must subordinate themselves to the demands of the market, our native Negro music has been subjected to the very worst of exploitation. Commercial jazz has prostituted and ruthlessly perverted many splendid models of Negro folk music and has corrupted and debased many talented Negro musicians in order to satisfy the desires of capitalist society..."
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