The Statue and Mr. Hoover
George Potor plays an acoustic 1970 Guild D35 guitar and delivers the vocal.
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Story behind the song
Written for an International Women's Day event in 1986, this piece is a hypothetical conversation between J. Edgar Hoover and the Statue Of Liberty as Emma Goldman was being deported (with 248 others). The ship is sailing past the Statue as the conversation takes place. Most of the lyrics (though in a fictional context) come from public record of the Red Scare deportation.
Lyrics
It was raw that December, Nineteen-nineteen,
A frosty Sunday morning in the Land of the Free.
The Buford, a decrepit old war transport ship
Set to sail past the Statue on the outward-bound trip.
Two hundred forty-nine tired and poor
Told they must leave this most Golden of Shores.
On board, Emma Goldman thumbs her nose at the court
As J. Edgar Hoover gives this angry report:
“Good riddance to those Reds on this Soviet Ark
With their sex and their isms and their sick patriarch.
Let them go, then, to Russia and see how they like it;
Our lives will be better without those damned kikes.”
Well, the Statue stood pale ‘gainst the blank Harbor sky.
She turned to Mr. Hoover as the Buford struggled by:
“There’re tears in my eyes from that unkind remark;
My torch is unlighted and I’m left in the dark.
The smoke from the Buford has covered my face.
Mr. Hoover you’ve hurt me, and you’ve made a mistake.
You’ve banished my child, who you don’t even recognize.
My daughter of the dream; Emma’s lost Paradise.”
He could not believe ‘twas the Lady he heard,
He, stunned by her ignorance, she, stung by his words:
“Crazed maker of bombs, Free-lover obscene,
Anarchist threat to you and to me.
This soldier of disorder’s Black War has failed;
Clean-handed justice has finally prevailed.
So, here’s to the Nation---Private Property First,
We’re happy to share the worst with the worst.
Let Emma go find someplace else to subvert,
We live by the law---she can live in the dirt.”
With the wind kicking up, and it looking like snow:
“I was here when she came, now I’m here as she goes.
A hopeless romantic, last to the first,
A dancer on fire; she speaks of her thirst:
Says Emma the Feminist: “My body is my own,”
Says Emma the Anarchist: “All Government must go”,
Says Emma the Survivor: “I fight them alone”,
Says Emma the Exile: “Just let me come home”.
