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Chapter 8 - Muscle, Blood, and Steel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2022

Will Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
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Summary

Labor’s gloves are off, and the country is rocked by waves of strikes, all backed by militant battle songs. The Pullman Strike brings to the fore Eugene Debs and other champions of labor and socialism, Coxey’s Army marches on Washington (singing), German immigrants fly the red flag of Anarchism (in song), and Jews fleeing from Russian pogroms swell the streets and sweatshops of New York’s Lower East Side, transforming the national soundscape with Yiddish labor anthems and laying the foundations of modern musical theater. The Mexican corrido becomes more prominent amidst white nativist hostility, and in California the Chinese community continues to pit their authentic songs of struggle against the slanders of minstrelsy and the insult of the Chinese Exclusion Act. On the western plains, the Lakota Ghost Dance and its attendant songs drive the US government into a panic born of ignorance, culminating in the massacre at Wounded Knee. With the frontier officially closed and white settler colonialism entrenched from sea to shining sea, the champions of Manifest Destiny look further westward, to the Pacific islands, where a songwriter named Lili’uokalani, the queen of Hawai’i, awaits her overthrow.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Muscle, Blood, and Steel
  • Will Kaufman, University of Central Lancashire, Preston
  • Book: American Song and Struggle from Columbus to World War 2
  • Online publication: 30 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086769.010
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  • Muscle, Blood, and Steel
  • Will Kaufman, University of Central Lancashire, Preston
  • Book: American Song and Struggle from Columbus to World War 2
  • Online publication: 30 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086769.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Muscle, Blood, and Steel
  • Will Kaufman, University of Central Lancashire, Preston
  • Book: American Song and Struggle from Columbus to World War 2
  • Online publication: 30 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086769.010
Available formats
×