Oh yeah. And a racist.
“But the most damning buried Guthrie biographical fact? That he was, just like his old man, a racist.
Having blacked up as a teenager in Okemah to perform a half-baked minstrel show, Guthrie while living in Echo Park took time out from championing oppressed white Okies to doodle his innumerable cartoons of what he described as “jungle blacks,” a group he also referred to as “niggers,” “darkies,” “chocolate drops” and, yes, “monkeys.”*
After encountering a group of African-Americans on Santa Monica Beach one day in 1937, Guthrie immortalized the meeting in a lengthy poem that included stanzas like, “What is that Ethiopian smell / upon the Zephyrs, what a fright!” and “We could dimly hear their chants / and we thought the blacks by chance / were doing a cannibal dance.”*
Broadcasting on Pasadena’s KFVD, Guthrie often indulged in on-air employ of ebonics and was stunned when a black listener characterized the singer as “unintelligent” after hearing Guthrie perform songs with titles like “Run, Nigger, Run” and “Nigger Blues.” Fortunately for Guthrie, recordings of these tunes do not survive.”
https://www.laweekly.com/little-known-fact-woody-guthrie-was-a-big-ol-racist/
Beat me to it. His dad was also a klansman with a lot of land.
That song that the press was saying was about Donald Trump’s dad could’ve been more directed at Woody’s own father.
Woodie Guthrie was a Communist Sympahizer the way Gus Hall was a Communist Sympathizer.