Song of The Day (May day edition 🚩🌹🥖
"Solidarity Forever" is an adaptation of the famous abolitionist song, "John Brown's Body" published in 1861 and created by Union Soldiers, based on the famous slave abolitionist John Brown.
In 1915, Ralph Chaplin a poet, labor activist, and member of the International Workers of the World (IWW) wrote the words for "Solidarity Forever" to the tune of the abolitionist song. It was first published in the 9th Edition of the Little Red Songbook. The earliest recording was by the Almanac singers in 1941
A year before Ralph Chaplin died, he wrote: "Why I Wrote Solidarity Forever". I highly recommend reading the whole thing but I will be summarizing parts of it here.
Chaplin had first heard the term 'Solidarity' from founding IWW member Eugene Debs, and tried to instill the idea within the song
"What we were seeking was a united labor movement – 'all for one and one for all' – and it was this principle that I tried to embody in 'Solidarity Forever'. That is why, if for no other reason, that the story of 'Solidarity Fovever' may be worth the telling."
He began writing the song in 1913 in response to the Kanawha County miners' strike. The Strike resulted in 50 violent deaths if not more, and the arrests of hundreds of workers and labor organizers.
Labor Activist Mother Jones rallying Workers 1912, Wikimedia Commons
"Solidarity Forever" wouldn't be finished until January 15, 1915, two days before Lucy Parsons (another founding mother of the IWW) led a march in Chicago of over 15,000 people demanding relief from hunger and unemployment.
Since then, the song had become very popular among striking and exploited workers, especially miners and loggers
"It is true that 'Solidarity Forever' was written in Chicago, but it is also true that nobody ever heard of it until fifty thousand striking Puget Sound loggers bellered it out to a world that didn't care a hoot about the problems of vote-less and cruelly exploited 'timber beasts'. It is also true that the young author of 'Solidarity Forever' had been shaped by bitterly contested labor struggles, including a two-year strike against mine owners of Kanawha County, West Virginia, but that it took the sustained militancy of the grass-roots Western Federation of Miners, in the face of equally ferocious opposition to put the hefty punch into 'Solidarity Forever'that later on made it the theme song of the entirely latter-day labor movement."
It is now considered one of the IWW's most famous songs and has become wildly adopted by many types of unions and labor organizers, which Chaplin was critical of.
"Something also beyond the wildest stretch of my imagination was the possibility of Big Unionism competing with Big Business on fairly equal terms – and using identifcal promotional devices, including singing commercials – to keep business booming. That sort of 'solidarity', in my humble opinion is nothing to brag about, or sing about."
The Legacy of "Solidarity Forever cannot be understated. it has been translated into many languages, and sung by leftists everywhere. From its history as both an abolitionist song, a miners' song, a Chicago song, and a logger's song; it serves as a reminder that many people fought and died for basic rights and labor protections.
Many people these days wonder how Joe Hill could stop traffic on busy skid row street corners singing such hilarious songs as 'Pie In The Sky' and 'Mr. Block', or how he could refuse to be blindfolded when he faced the firing squad at the Utah State Prison, and himself give the order for the fatal volley that made his name the symbol of dedicated service to the economic underdog. Or why the striking loggers on the S.S. Verona chose to die singing 'Hold the Fort' and 'Solidarity Forever' in the rain of bullets from a mob of respectable businessmen on the docks at Everett, Washington. Or why young Wesley Everest, union organizer and World War I veteran, was lynched at midnight from 'Hangman's Bridge' in Centralia, Washington. Or why my good friend and fellow worker Frank Little was given the same treatment by hired anaconda gun-thugs for attempting to organize the mercilessly exploited hardrock miners at Butte, Montana. This could go on and on, every word of it is true, but only to be discounted as the resentment of an old codger mumbling through his beard.
And this is it. When the mask of humanity falls from Capital, the only thing we have left is Solidarity for our fellow workers. Solidarity Forever.
