Pete Sings at Beacon High | November 27, 1965

In Beacon, we celebrated Pete Seeger's 100th birthday in 2019. Today, Pete is a revered figure in our community, but in the stormy decade of the 1960s, this was not always the case as the following news story reveals...

Passions were aroused. Accusations were flying. And great issues about democratic principles were up for debate. 

All this brouhaha occurred because folksinger Pete Seeger was asked to perform in the Beacon High School gymnasium in a concert to benefit the Beacon Teachers Association’s Scholarship Loan Fund. The time was the holiday season of 1965. The Vietnam War was in escalation and increasingly in the forefront of the news then, and Pete Seeger was an early and vociferous opponent of that war. In fact a few weeks earlier, Pete had performed at Russia’s Moscow University and had sung a few anti-war songs, a newsworthy item of the day quickly picked up by the Herald Tribune and the New York Times. 

And local feelings by some about the singer were still raw over Pete’s failure to testify to a House Committee investigating Communism. These factors came into play to stir up controversy when the Beacon School Board invited Pete to sing at Beacon High School on a Saturday night concert after Thanksgiving. Immediately after the announcement, a local committee of 12 civic, fraternal and religious organizations was formed to stop the concert. The board of education came under fire by this committee for allowing a “figure of controversy” to appear before impressionable youngsters. The committee of 12 accused the board of education of not truly representing the will of the people, who if polled, would not want anti-war propaganda foisted upon the community by one so manifestly anti-American. Letters to the Editor began pouring into The Evening News about the Seeger controversy in a ratio of about five letters for Pete to every letter against his appearing. Writers to the newspaper invoked great principles of our heritage--like Freedom of Speech and the right to dissent; many expressed the thought that Pete was just a great folksinger, and therefore, let the artist perform. On the night of the concert, November 27, 1965, Beacon police chief Sam Wood and five of his officers patrolled the gymnasium to keep order. There was no need. No one was there to protest. The gym was filled to capacity with an audience that ranged from senior citizens to elementary school-age children, all eager to hear America’s foremost folksinger. Pete sang for two hours, 25 songs in all, including “Old Dutchess Junction,” sung to the tune of Red River Valley. The concert had raised $3,000 for the scholarship fund with Pete donating his services. Perhaps hearts and minds were changed by this concert, and very soon a community was to learn more about Pete Seeger and that there is a time to every purpose under heaven.