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Faculdade Castelo Branco
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The Angry 1960s - (2)
Karla Baptista*
Resumo
Este artigo tem como objetivo revelar os anos turbulentos da década de 1960, nos Estados Unidos
da América, por meio do testamento de uma ativista social e política, cantora e compositora, Joan
Baez, e sua autobiografia, um gênero literário que revolucionou a teoria e crítica literária nas
ultimas três décadas.
Palavras chave: Ativismo social e político. Autobiografia. Comprometimento.
Abstract
This article has the purpose of revealing the turbulent years of the 1960s in the USA through the
testament of a social and political activist, singer and songwriter, Joan Baez, and her autobiography, a
literary genre that has revolutionized literary criticism and theory of the last three decades.
Keywords: Social and political activism. Autobiography. Commitment.
INTRODUCTION
The article The Angry1960s (1), published in Revista Castelo Branco Científica – Ano I, nº 1, 2012,
gives us an overview of the many disturbing questions that circulated among the American people
during the turbulent 1960s. Such issues confronted equality and inequality, war and peace, national
interests versus individual rights, personal behavior versus community standards. America was
opened to scrutiny. Millions of Americans became activists and took to the streets, calling into question
the very nature and meaning of their country.
In this context, Joan Chandos Baez (b.1941), an American singer, songwriter, musician, and political
* KARLA BAPTISTA , Mestre em Estudos Literários pela UFMG - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Professora de Literaturas de Língua Inglesa do Curso de Letras da Faculdade Castelo Branco.
Castelo Branco Científica - Ano I - Nº 02 - julho/dezembro de 2012 - www.castelobrancocientifica.com.br
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activist has reconstructed her memories of political agency using her life narrative And a Voice to Sing
With (Baez 1987) as a source of information on the questions that enclosed the liberation movements in
the USA, as well as an important account of her life and activism, transforming her experience into
literature.
A life narrative as a testament of activism - A Voice to Sing With – a Memoir by Joan Baez
A rising national leader in the growing protest movements of the 1960s and early 1970s in the United
States of America, Baez has earned fame as much for her singing as for her political activism. She used
her celebrity and the titles of "Queen of the Folksingers" and "The Madonna of Folk", to publicize her
views on equal rights and pacifism: "My foundations in non-violence were both moral and pragmatic"
(Baez 41). In her autobiography, And a Voice to Sing With, Baez expresses her disappointment with a
new generation of young people who seemed more interested in obtaining material things than in
helping others. She is known for her struggles against social ills, not only in America but around the
world. She actively opposed the Vietnam War. The power of her voice and the sincerity of her message
have all contributed to her appeal for human rights, disarmament, and non-violence.
The autobiographical genre
The genre of autobiography, understood as "a study of the creative process, a humanistic study of the
ways of men, and the forms taken by human consciousness" (Olney 10) is relevant to the study of life
narratives. However, thanks to the growing development of literary criticism and theory, a whole new
The anti-war movement in the USA - Attracting members from college campuses, middle-class suburbs, labor unions, and
government institutions, the movement gained national prominence in 1965, peaked in 1968, and remained powerful
throughout the duration of the conflict. Encompassing political, racial, and cultural spheres, the antiwar movement exposed
a deep schism within 1960s American society.
The Religious Society of Friends began in England in the late 1640s, in a context of social upheaval which included
increasing dissatisfaction with the established church, the execution of the king, and the rise of Nonconformist movements.
The founder of Quakerism is generally accepted to have been George Fox. He became convinced that it was possible to
have a direct experience of Jesus Christ without the mediation of clergy. He began to spread this message as an itinerant
preacher and found several pre-existing groups of like-minded people; he felt called to gather them together, eventually
becoming accepted as their leader.
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range of approaches to autobiographies are available. Autobiographies, previously considered a minor
literary genre, have become the focus of recent studies, offering a privileged access to an experience
that no other writing can offer.
Although women have written autobiographies for many centuries, it was only in the last three decades
that a ferment of activity in theorizing women's life writing can be considered remarkable. Women's life
issues such as growing up female, coming to voice, affiliation, sexuality, the life cycle, etc., have been
pivotal to revising the concepts of women's life theorizing thanks largely to feminism which has
revolutionized literary and social theory.
The writing and theorizing of women's lives have emphasized the collective process while questioning
the universality of the solitary self. Collective consciousness makes women act on behalf of others.
This concern about others is one of the main features in women's life writing. Also, connections with
other people build the grounds for the theorizing on the female identity as relational, rather than
individual.
Joan Baez, unconvincingly claims to write her memoirs to herself: “[...] and most
important…recording them for [herself]”. In fact, the pact with the public that will keep her out from
fading fame resonates: “I have led an extraordinary life and want to tell people about it ... I am ... active,
creative, in vocal prime, and do not wish to be relegated to obscurity, antiquity, or somebody else's
dewy-eye nostalgia about days gone by to take a hard look back before facing forward in these most
bizarre of times" (13). Joan Baez goes further than this: she narrates her story as a testament of her
activism in the turbulent historical scenario of the USA during the 1960s and 1970s, predominantly that
of the Vietnam War.
Joan Baez's life narrative falls into the “memoir” category: it is in part a narrative of the self, but the self
in a relational configuration, occupying a public space and sharing it equally with public figures such as
Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, etc. Baez chose the mode of life narrative that situates her
historically in a social environment as both an observer and participant. Smith and Watson (Reading
109) refer to memoirs as a reconstruction of “various pieces of memory, experience, identity,
embodiment, and agency into new, often hybrid, modes of subjectivity”.
Baez in her frank, moving, and sometimes funny memoir, tells the story of her life, her family, her loves,
her music, her demons, her beliefs, as well as the central events of turbulent American history: from the
coffeehouses of the 1950s folk scene, where she started her singing career, to the racially tense South of
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the early 1960s, bringing support to the terrorized blacks with Martin Luther King, Jr.. Through Baez's
memoirs we can meet celebrities of the music business; we can meet members of the draft resistance;
we travel around the world, from a bomb shelter in Hanoi to Italy, France and Spain, where her concerts
made headlines for the political confrontations they sparked. She recounts her stormy love affair with a
young, undiscovered, and very ambitious Bob Dylan and her secret affair with a woman. She tells about
her clashing with authorities over human rights abuse and disarmament.
Baez uses her memoirs to show how successfully she overcame the melancholic introspection that was
part of her early years, and how her relationship with “others” made her find joy in living. It was during
her childhood that Baez began to develop a political identity and the growth for social awareness. When
she was ten, her father took a job with UNESCO, to teach and build a laboratory at the University of
Baghdad. Baghdad was, according to Baez, a melancholy place. She was horrified to see beggars in the
streets, animals beaten to death, people rooting for food in the garbage, legless children, covered with
flies feeding on open sores, begging for money. She felt sorry for the “bloody natives” scorned by the
British at the country club. The dust storms that immersed everyone in a fierce brown wind, made Baez
understand the hardships of the people who inhabited that arid land.
Baez's Mexican background made her different from the other kids at her Junior High School, in
Redlands, California. Because she had a Mexican name, skin, and hair, Baez was not accepted by the
Anglos, and because she did not speak Spanish, she was isolated by the Mexicans, who constituted a
large group in that area. She was isolated not only by her ethnicity, but also by her fear and opposition to
armaments during the 1950s, the heart of the Cold War. Baez inherited from her family's nonviolent
Quaker beliefs anti-war ideas in an era in which “communism was a dirty word and the arms race a
jingoistic crusade” (28). Her pacifism was largely due to the discussions taking place at home, but also
from attending Quaker work camps where she learned about alternatives to violence on personal,
political, national, and international levels. She was disdained by classmates, some of whose frightened
parents warned them not to talk to her.
The Rise of a Committed Woman Singer
The sense of isolation led Baez develop her voice, which would become the main instrument of her
pacifist activism. Powerless to change her social status, she decided to change her voice, from a “plain
little girl's voice, sweet and true ... as thin and straight as an arrow” to a “shaky but honest vibrato” (29).
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At eighteen, she was already performing at a Jazz club in Boston, which among the many coffeehouses
in Harvard Square, became a new phenomenon of the changing ages.
Baez established herself as a talented and exciting new folksinger. She released her first album, Joan
Baez, in 1960, becoming a huge success. Indifference to most of the luxuries other mainstream
musicians obtained though their fortune and fame intensified Baez's reputable and strong politicallybased persona. Baez's success grew, especially during the first five years of her career, when she
released seven albums and took part in numerous music festivals alongside many big names. In her
several concerts at Southern universities, she applauded black students for attending such concerts
and encouraged the rest of the audience against acting or thinking in racist terms. The list of political
activist-inspired concerts, speeches, and rallies in Baez's career were centered on her music, beliefs,
and messages of peace.
Baez and the Vietnam War
Baez was a foremost figure in the anti-war movement of the 1960s. Her socio-political conscience and
music made her seriously committed to the principles of pacifism. She supported the anti-draft
movement, and participated in anti-war manifestations. It was during her mid-twenties that she made
her choice: “I have a choice of things to do with my life. I think it is time to change. I want to start a
peace movement ... the time is ripe ... I just feel that people are searching and groping for something
real, sometimes truthful. The movement will be nonviolent ... I must be ready not to die for something,
but to live for it ...” (124).
Baez used all her money and status for the anti-war movement. She recorded her albums and used her
concerts to spread her word of peace. She was everywhere; she toured around the world; she was on
TV and newspapers. Her public image was clear: a girl, a guitar, her songs, and a message. In one of
her concert's brochure she wrote:
The entertainment industry would have me tell you about “Joan Baez, the Folksinger”. How I “got
started” and where I've sung and what laurels I have gathering dust under my bed. But I'll tell you
simply, that there is no “Joan Baez, the Folksinger”. There is me, 28 years old, pregnant, my husband
just beginning three years in prison for draft refusal and resistance organizing ... Me, sitting here ... and
thinking about dying in Vietnam, Biafra, India, Peru, U.S.A… In the midst of all these things, how
could I pretend to entertain you? Sing to you, yes. To proud you, to remind you, to bring you joy, or
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sadness, or anger... And I will say ... Consider life. Give life priority over all things. Over land. Over
law. Over profit. Over promises. Over all things (168).
Baez, led by her successful singing career, became a national leader in the growing protest movements
of the 1960s, organizing her own tour of performances at black colleges, facing “huge policemen ...
swinging their billy clubs like pendulums” (105) to prevent her from performing to crowds of black
students. Baez admits that she feared for her life: “every muscle in my body jerked, my skin went all
prickly, and I thought I would simply pass out from fright” (106), but courage came from the image of
the kids.
Another way to protest the Vietnam War, besides drawing crowds to listen to her message of
nonviolence, annoying the “radical” left with her “moderate ideas”, was deciding to withhold 60% of
her federal income taxes to deny support for the US Defense Department and its war effort. When
threatened to go to jail and warned that “jail's for bad people! Jail's for criminals”, Baez reminded the
officer about Jesus, Gandhi, and Thoreau. A representative from the IRS would appear at her concerts
and take all the cash from the register. The tax resistance movement grew stronger, as it represented
“criticism of not just the war in Vietnam, but all wars” (122).
Among concerts and records being released, Baez and Ira, her “devilish prophet and mentor”, formed a
school called the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence. Speakers, scholars, and activists from all over
the world attended seminars and conferences at the Institute. The silence of the Quakers opened each
seminar. Concepts, theory, history, and application of nonviolence were studied. All the money she
earned from concerts and record royalties was given away to cooperative nursery schools, Quaker
Meetings, peace groups. However, she could not live free of possessions, like Gandhi. She tried, but
did not succeed: “I was attached to my house, my boyfriends, my ever-changing wardrobe, and my
demons” (128).
Through the 1970s, Baez continued her musical career and her social and political activities. In the
spring of 1972, she was in one of the largest demonstrations Washington had ever seen; women and
children of America demanding that no more funds go to continue the war; “no more funds to bomb,
napalm, strafe, gas, torture and massacre the crossfire victims” (184). Baez helped establish Amnesty
International on the west coast, giving benefits concerts for the organizations. At the end of 1972 she
traveled to North Vietnam, to distribute mail and Christmas presents to American prisoners of war,
finding herself in the midst of American bombings of Hanoi, the Christmas bombing, the heaviest
bombing in the history of the world that lasted eleven days. She recalls it in her autobiography:
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One night as we waited in the [bomb] shelter, someone asked me to sing “Kumbaya”. As the verse
progressed, we heard the planes in the distance, heading toward the city" (209) ... Men were standing
atop craters banked with mud and trash ... We were walking on top of what had been people's homes.
Here was a shoe, here a half-buried little sweater ... a woman bending low to the ground singing a
strange little song 'Mon fils, mon fils, ou êtes vous maintenant, mon fils? - My son, my son, where are
you now, my son? (218)
Baez's album Where Are You Now, My Son? (1973) was her gift to the Vietnamese people. The title
song is the story of Baez's Christmas in Hanoi. It is a long poem partially sung, describing the bombing
and an old woman at Kan Thiem chanting, "Oh, my son, where are you?”
Oh, people of the shelter, what a gift you've given me
To smile at me and quietly let me share your agony
And I can only bow in utter humbleness and ask
Forgiveness and forgiveness for the things we've brought to pass.
The black pajama'd culture that we tried to kill with pellet holes
And the rows of tiny coffins we have paid for with our souls
Have built a spirit seldom seen in women and men
And the White Flower of Bach Mai will surely blossom once again.
I've heard that the war is done
Then, where are you now, my son?
Baez and the Feminist Agenda
Although Baez was a political activist in many aspects, there was only one movement in the 1960s in
which she was not directly involved: the women's liberation movement. When she was asked about the
women's movement she said: “I don't relate to feminism. I'm not a feminist. I do think women go
through some kind of hell that men don't understand ...”(150). The Women's Liberation Movement, of
all the 1960s movements, was one of the most important, but Joan's non-involvement did not mean that
she completely disregarded women's issues; in fact, she was an excellent role-model in the 1960s, often
singing songs about independence. As for her impact on feminism, Baez's efforts to encourage men to
burn their draft cards and avoid being sent to war with the popular slogan “Girls say yes to boys who say
no” enraged feminists:
One day three women's libbers came up to register some complaints. They didn't like the poster The
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Resistance had put out. It was a picture of Pauline and Mimi and me all wearing hats ... and the caption
said: “GIRLS SAY YES TO BOYS WHO SAY NO”. I thought it was clever. The feminists hated it
because it said “girls” and because the women shouldn't have to answer to anyone, especially men, not
yes or no. They wanted the poster taken off the market. I honest to God didn't know what they were
talking about (152-3).
Despite her denial of connection with women's liberation, her presence was a living example of
feminine activism. Less through words, and more through actions, she was a true role model. With
feminism in the forefront, the provocative slogan, directed to men, was also saying “we will sleep with
you if you refuse to go to war”. According to Hadju, Baez, talking to her audience between songs at the
Sing-in for Peace in Vietnam rally, begged: “I make one request to the men in the audience – don't
cooperate with the draft”. The reaction by the public was at first a shock. “A folksinger mainly in name,
Baez was now making more news for what she said than for what she sang” (268).
Baez can be said to have created double gender stereotypes. Although she did not commit herself
directly to the feminist movement, she embodied the liberated woman that was claimed by feminists in
the conservative American society. However, in other instances, such as submissiveness to men in
some relationships, she projected a mainly traditional female identity. When she forcedly used the
public sphere to campaign for political causes, she crossed-over, reinforcing tendencies considered
masculine. This gender complexity increased her appeal to various publics and both sexes, and in an era
when stereotypes began to be questioned, became a musical and political symbol.
Sexual freedom, an issue that agitated America and was defended by feminism and the counter-culture,
was naturally part of Baez's life since she was eighteen: “I told my mother I needed some birth control.
'Do you love him', she asked, and then sent me off to a doctor, who reluctantly fit me for a diaphragm.
Birth control was illegal in Massachusetts in 1958” (53). Baez admits that after years of telling herself
she “would go to hell” if she did “it” [sex], finally knew her body was making more sense than her
“Spanish demons”. “'It' was marvelous, and quite for some time, Michael and I spent most of our
energy figuring out where we could go and do 'it' next” (57).
Baez writes honestly about her sexual desires at a fixed time in her life, when her “demons were
running wild” and her singing career was dawning:
[...] I was sick with demons. Sometimes I needed to be held like a lost and trembling waif, and other
times to flirt and conquer. I was the perfect example of the common high school expression “P.T.” (prick
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tease), and in refusing to consummate my seductions could tell myself that I had been and was still
“good”. The Madonna was in the village; she didn't drink, take drugs, or make love, and yet somehow
she was like a whore, and her demons were running wild. Many years later, Michael told me that that
was why he fell in love with me. The 'virgin” he worshipped and the “whore” he wanted to save (64).
Baez's narrative exposes the cost of her public life, associated with her “pure virginity” at the same
time that her own sexual desires are unmasked. Her memoirs, from this specific period of her life, like
any life storytelling, are filled with material “drawn from multiple, disparate, and discontinuous
experiences and the multiple identities constructed from and constituting those experiences” (Smith &
Watson Reading 35).
In the public sphere, especially concerning her involvement with Civil Rights and the anti-war
crusade, the identity Baez created showed her persistence and strength of character in confronting
obstacles as she pursued her goals. As an agent in the public arena, the characteristics she developed,
such as courage, dynamism, forcefulness, good sense and moral rectitude, marked her position of
leadership in a space that has traditionally been a male privilege. A concern for others motivated her
actions. From the moment she converted to activism, the submissiveness that was apparent in her male
relationships which obscured her social-political conscience and her music was replaced by a firm
desire to act as a moral agent, working on behalf of a cause to perfect society.
Baez popularity began to decline in the early 1980s. However, her commitment to social causes
throughout the world has not diminished. In 1985, she opened the US portion of Live Aid, the multi-act
rock concert that raised money for famine victims of Ethiopia. The following year she took part in the
“Conspiracy of Hope” concert tour celebrating Amnesty International's 25th anniversary. In 1987 she
published her autobiography, where at the end she expresses her disappointment in a new generation of
young people who seemed more interested in obtaining material things than in helping others.
In the 1960s Baez was fighting against the war in Vietnam and has, since then, used her music to further
political causes: “It felt fine being a part of the sixties and I'm glad to be out of them and busy trying to
find ways to get people to face the realities of the eighties ... (325):
Hoping to set an example for younger generations, Baez has continued her activism, something of
which she is proud. “I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and
stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and
sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world” (12). Her memoirs and lyrics
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remain inseparable from the public events that shaped her era. Her songs render the message of
searching for hope in the middle of political and social causes, reflecting the world around us in an
attempt to create positive change.
Bibliography
BAEZ, Joan Chandos. And a voice to sing with. New York: Summit Books, 1987
BAPTISTA, Karla. Autobiographies of militant women: Joan Baez and Leila Khaled. 2002. 116 f.
Dissertação (Mestrado em Estudos Literários) – Curso de pós-graduação em Literaturas de Língua
Inglesa, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, MG.
HADJU, David. Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi
Baez
Farina, and Richard Farina. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2001.
OLNEY, James. "Autobiography and the Cultural Moment" (Introd.). Autobiography:
Essays
Theoretical and Critical. New Jersey: Princeton U. P., 1980. 3-25.
SMITH, Sidonie; WATSON, Julia. Women, Autobiography, Theory – A Reader. Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
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