A Pete Seeger stamp

[Click for a larger view.]

I need to get to the post office more often: in July, the USPS issued a Pete Seeger stamp. It’s a good image, from a black-and-white photograph by Pete’s son Dan.

The brief biography on the USPS website rewards close reading, as much for what it omits as what it includes. It makes no mention of the Almanac Singers’ anti-interventionist position in World War II (which ended when Germany attacked the Soviet Union), saying only that the group “tunefully promoted labor unions, then patriotic songs as war loomed.” Nor is there any reference to Seeger and the Weavers being blacklisted in the 1950s. And though the bio does mention Seeger’s contributions to the causes of civil rights and environmentalism, there’s no reference to his anti-Vietnam War efforts. Readers of a certain age will remember “Bring ’Em Home.” And will also remember that in 1967 Seeger was not permitted to sing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In 1968 he did.

So it would appear that the USPS has constructed a less “controversial” image of Seeger. Oh well. Perhaps that was a way to sneak him past Louis DeJoy.

A good way to think about Pete Seeger’s appearance on a stamp: a man once viewed as “un-American” was of course a true American all along. I remember a 2006 New Yorker profile of Seeger that closed with a glimpse of him standing by himself along Route 9 in Beacon, New York, during the invasion of Iraq, holding a sign that read PEACE. Speaking your mind freely and without fear, even if alone: that’s American.

Related reading
All OCA Pete Seeger posts (Pinboard)