The Powerful Messages That Woody Guthrie & Pete Seeger Inscribed on Their Guitar & Banjo: "This Machine Kills Fascists" and "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender"

"Like anoth­er famous Okie from Musko­gee, Woody Guthrie came from a part of Okla­homa that the U.S. gov­ern­ment sold dur­ing the 1889 land rush away from the Qua­paw and Osage nations, as well as the Musco­gee, a peo­ple who had been forcibly relo­cat­ed from the South­east under Andrew Jackson's Indi­an Removal Act. By the time of Guthrie's birth in 1912 in Okfus­kee Coun­ty, next to Musko­gee,"

"Guthrie was named after pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son, who was high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to Jim Crow (but per­haps not, as has been alleged, an admir­er of the Klan). While he inher­it­ed many of his father's atti­tudes, he recon­sid­ered them to such a degree lat­er in life that he wrote a song denounc­ing the noto­ri­ous­ly racist New York land­lord Fred Trump, father of the cur­rent pres­i­dent. "By the time he moved into his new apart­ment" in Brook­lyn in 1950, writes Will Kauf­man at The Guardian, Guthrie "had trav­eled a long road from the casu­al racism of his Okla­homa youth.""

The U.S. government sold lands during the 1889 land rush, displacing the Quapaw, Osage, and Muscogee (Muscogee) people who had been forcibly relocated under the Indian Removal Act. Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okfuskee County near Muskogee into a region controlled by conservative Democrats. His father Charles was a landowner and member of the revived KKK who participated in a brutal lynching the year before Guthrie's birth. Guthrie was named after President Woodrow Wilson, a figure sympathetic to Jim Crow. Guthrie inherited many of his father's attitudes but later reconsidered them and wrote a song denouncing New York landlord Fred Trump; by 1950 he had traveled a long road from the casual racism of his Oklahoma youth. Guthrie was deeply embedded in the formative racial politics of the country.

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