Solidarity Forever is probably one of the more famous songs of the US labor movement, and I've noticed a resurgence of the song in recent years. My DSA chapter sings Solidarity Forever at the close of each meeting, so I thought I'd trace where the song comes from.

The lyrics date to the early 20th century, but the melody can be traced much further back, all the way to the late 1700s and early 1800s in the United States, in a song called Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us?

Say, Brothers Will You Meet Us? comes from the American camp meeting circuit around the time of the Second Great Awakening, a period of Protestant religious revival in the early 19th century - increased spiritual interest in Protestant religious traditions in the United States. The song can be traced in print back to around 1806, but it likely evolved and circulated orally much earlier, and it became a popular hymn with both Black and white worshippers in the camp meeting circuit.

Camp meetings were large Protestant religious services held on the American frontier which at the time had very few houses of worship or ordained ministers, meaning that many in the new territories were unable to access religious services. Itinerant preachers would set up religious meetings at a certain temporary location, and word would spread about the meeting through word-of-mouth, attracting settlers from a wide area. Many, travelling far from their homes for the meeting, would camp there for the duration - hence the name, camp meeting. Although many came out of sincere religious devotion, there were also many who came out of interest and because it offered a break from the hardships of frontier life, and camp meetings often resulted in many new converts.

In these spaces, hymns were taught and learned by rote, and many of the hymns took on an improvisational element in the lyrics and performance - melodies and lyrics were played with and changed often. Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us? evolved out of this, as many cultures and ways of life collided at the camp meeting.

However, as popular as Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us? was, the song that it became next would prove even more well-known and influential.

John Brown's Body is often attributed to the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Massachusetts militia, the so-called "Tiger" Battalion, during the American civil war. George Kimball, a member of the Tiger Battalion in 1861, writes

We had a jovial Scotchman in the battalion named John Brown. He was among the leading spirits, foremost always in funmaking; and as he happened to bear the identical name of the old hero of Harper's Ferry, he became at once the butt of his comrades. A great deal of pleasantry was engaged in at his expense, and he was often guyed unmercifully. If he made his appearance a few minutes late among the working squad, or was a little tardy in falling into the company line, he was sure to be greeted with such expressions as 'Come old fellow, you ought to be at it if you are going to help us free the slaves;' or, 'This can't be John Brown - why, John Brown is dead.' And then some would add, in a solemn, drawling tone, as if it were his purpose to give particular emphasis that John Brown was really, actually dead: 'Yes, yes, poor old John Brown is dead; his body lies mouldering in the grave.'

This quote is from an article entitled "Origin of the John Brown Song" by George Kimball, published in the New England Magazine in 1890. This article dates John Brown's Body to 1861, just around the time that the Civil War began.

The article describes how Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us? was a popular song that the Tiger Battalion sang while working or in the evening. Eventually, rhymes were composed to be sung to the tune of Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us?, and these rhymes eventually evolved into John Brown's Body. The song became immediately popular among the battalion. In fact, the first popular performance of the song was at Fort Warren near Boston, during a flag-raising ceremony (Fort Warren was where Tiger Battalion was based, and where the song was written). From here, the John Brown song, as it was often referred to, spread like wildfire among the Union army and even civilians. However, the Scotchman John Brown of the Tiger Battalion died June 6, 1862, drowned in the Shenandoah River near Front Royal, VA.

But the song he helped inspire proved immensely popular, and became the basis for a number of Civil War songs. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was written in 1861 by Julia Ward Howe after Howe and the Reverend James Freeman Clarke heard the John Brown song sung by the Tiger Battalion at a public review of the troops outside Washington, DC on Upton Hill in Virginia. Clarke suggested to Howe she write new words to the song, likely because many, including some leaders of the Tiger Battalion, considered the John Brown song coarse and irreverent, with some leaders of the Tiger Battalion urging the adoption of different lyrics.

John Brown's Body also directly inspired the Marching Song of the First Arkansas, the First Arkansas being a Union regiment of freed slaves formed in 1863 after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. The lyrics are attributed to the regiment's white officer, Captain Lindley Miller, who wrote to his mother in 1864, "I wrote a song for [the troops] to the tune of 'John Brown' the other day, which the whole regiment sings." However, the most important song influenced by John Brown's Body would not be written until after the turn of the 20th century.

In 1912, Ralph Chaplin, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was in Kanawha County, West Virginia covering the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek coal strike of 1912-1913 (also called the Paint Creek Mine War) for Solidarity, the official IWW newspaper, and also working in the strike committee (alongside Mother Jones). The strike was violent - mine operators brought in the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, and beatings and sniper attacks were daily occurrences, as were clashes with the police led by Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill. Mine owners started evicting workers from houses rented from the company at one point, and striking miners were forced to create a temporary tent colony. Sheriff Hill later led an attack on the tent colony using an armored train with machine guns and high-powered rifles, in retaliation for an attack on a nearby mine.

At least 50 people died directly from the violence, and many more from malnutrition, starvation, cold, and the unsanitary conditions in the tent colony. This strike acted as a precursor to subsequent mine wars in West Virginia, namely the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Chaplin, inspired by the resilience, resolve and high spirits of the miners, began work on a song which he later finished in 1915 in Chicago, called Solidarity Forever. It was subsequently published in the 9th edition of the IWW's Little Red Songbook in 1916.

At the time of publishing, Chaplin was still a writer for Solidarity, but in 1917 he became its editor. However, he was arrested later that year under the Espionage Act of 1917 for conspiring to hinder the draft and encourage desertion.

The US had declared war on Germany in April 1917 and officially entered WWI. In June 1917 the Espionage Act of 1917 was passed making it a crime, among other things, to

...willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or...willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States...

The IWW, with its hard antiwar stance and opposition to US involvement in WWI, was targeted under this act, and on September 5, 1917, agents from the Department of Justice simultaneously raided 48 IWW meeting halls across the country, arresting close to 200 IWW leaders and members, Chaplin among them. They were charged under Section 3 of the Espionage Act of 1917 (above). Most IWW members were sentenced to 10-20 years in prison, although some were given prison sentences as high as 40 years. Chaplin was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $20,000.

With Chaplin in prison and the US government cracking down on antiwar sentiment in the US, Solidarity ceased publishing by the end of 1917.

Chaplin ended up only serving 4 years of his 20-year sentence. However, once he got out, he gradually became an anticommunist, turning against the Bolshevik revolution and crusading against communist infiltration of the US labor movement.

The recording of Solidarity Forever I believe most people know is the recording by Pete Seeger above. This version was recorded in 1955 by Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers (a group that included Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary) to be included on a rerelease of the Almanac Singers' 1941 album, Talking Union . However, this version only includes four verses, and leaves out the most radical verses, so I've included the full six verse lyrics in the comments (cause I can't fit it here).