Friday's Labor Folklore 
Con Carbon, Minstrel of the Mine Patch
Solidarity Forever  
 

"Solidarity Forever" - the most popular union song in America - is over 100 years old.  Sung at union meetings, rallies and on picket lines, "Solidarity Forever" has become the anthem of America's labor movement.

   

The song was written on January 17, 1915 by Ralph Chaplin, the famous poet, artist, writer and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) .

 

Chaplin recalls, "I wanted a song to be full of revolutionary fervor and to have a chorus that was singing and defiant."  He achieved exactly this effect by combining his militant lyrics with the stirring Civil War tune of "John Brown's Body."

 

It was a strike by West Virginia coal miners at Paint Creek and Cabin Creek in 1912 that inspired Ralph Chaplin to write "Solidarity Forever."  He originally wrote six verses but the three given here are the ones usually sung today.

 

-- edited from Songs of Work and Protest by Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, originally published in 1960 by the Labor Education Division of Roosevelt University.  

Solidarity Forever

by Ralph Chaplin

(Tune: John Brown's Body)

When the union's inspiration through the workers'   
   blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun.
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble
   strength of one?
But the union makes us strong.
CHORUS:
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us strong.
Chorus
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel
   could turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom
   when we learn
That the union makes us strong.

Chorus

 

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old

For the union makes us strong. 

Solidarity Day, Sept. 19, 1981, Washington, DC
Photo: Russ Marshall for UAW Solidarity
The Origin of the Song

 
The IWW Little Red Songbook - now in its 38th edition - lists the tune for "Solidarity Forever" as "John Brown's Body."  The AFL-CIO Songbook - published in 1974 (rev. ed.) identifies the tune as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  What's the story behind the tune?
  • "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was written by Julia Ward Howe in November 1861, after witnessing a review of Union troops crossing the Potomac River in Washington, DC.  The troops were singing "John Brown's Body," which was the most popular song in the Union army. Howe, a well-known poet and activist, had hosted John Brown at her home in Boston.  "Battle Hymn's" first line begins with "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" which, for Howe, reflected the coming apocalypse of the Civil War.
  • The song "John Brown's Body" originated while memories were still fresh of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859.   After South Carolina attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Massachusetts Infantry, 2nd Battalion was assembled and in its ranks was a Scottish immigrant named John Brown.  To needle him about his famous name, fellow soldiers began writing verses to "John's Brown's Body" sung to the tune of an old Southern camp-meeting spiritual, "Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us." 
  • "John Brown's Body" became the anthem of the reorganized 12th Massachusetts Regiment and troops sang it while under review on Boston Common.  It became especially popular among African Americans during the Civil War.  It was a favorite of Sojourner Truth and was sung by the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops when they marched triumphantly into Charleston, S.C. in February 1865.  Many were familiar with the melody as "Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us" which had been sung since the early 1800s when it first appeared in hymnbooks.
  • "Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us" originated as a folk hymn sung at camp meetings attended by whites and blacks, slave and free. The song was easily memorized and had a call-and-response structure.  The song originated in the South and was associated as a white Methodist spiritual.  African Americans adopted the song as a "ring shout" which was sung as worshippers moved in a circle stomping their feet and clapping their hands.
(Material obtained and quoted extensively from "The Song that Marches on : the Obscure Origins and History of America's Unofficial Anthem" by John Stauffer in Civil War Times, Feb. 2015. Mr. Stauffer, with Ben Soskis, is the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic : a Biography of the Song that Marches On.)
Sing
Solidarity Forever