“Ballad of William Worthy” – A Glimpse at the 60s
So last weekend, we went to the Antique Emporium in Burlington NJ and I browsed through some of the vinyl albums they had for sale. I ended up buying two albums. One was the album Raw Sienna from Savoy Brown. The other was All the News that’s Fit to Sing from Phil Ochs. Of the two albums I am way more familiar with the Phil Ochs album.
I discovered Phil’s music several years after the release of All the News… Through the years have heard most of the songs on the album, it ever owned it. Phil from the beginning wrote topical songs better than anyone else! So if you want to study the 60s listen to the songs of Phil Ochs.
“ Ballad of William Worthy” is one of those songs.
Here’s some background about William Worthy….
From Wikipedia…
William Worthy, Jr. (July 7, 1921 – May 4, 2014) was an African-American journalist, civil rights activist, and dissident who pressed his right to travel regardless of U.S. State Department regulations.
About William Worthy’s Travels and Troubles
William Worthy traveled the world from 1955 to 1961. Reporting from many controversial locations. In 1955, he spent six weeks in Moscow, interviewing Nikita Khrushchev. Then in 1956, he managed to board a plane to apartheid South Africa, but was deported after 36 hours
He followed his trip to South Africa in 1956 with a trip to Communust China. The Worthy interviewed Zhou Enlai. He became the first American reporter to visit and broadcast from China since the country’s 1949 communist revolution. After his trip to China Worthy’s passport was seized. While American lawyers Leonard Boudin and William Kunstler represented Worthy, he failed to win the return of his passport.
However, that didn’t stop Worthy, in the early days of the Cuban Revolution, Worthy traveled to Cuba without a passport to report on the Revolution . He was able to return to the U.S. in October 1961, showing his birth certificate and vaccination record at Miami Airport.
Unfortunately, in April 1962, he was summoned to Miami, where he was tried and convicted for “returning to the United States without a valid passport.” Additionally, he was placed under surveillance by the FBI.
Worthy was represented again by Kunstler, who successfully persuaded a federal appeals court to overturn Worthy’s conviction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found the restrictions unconstitutional. The court held that the government could not make it a crime under the Constitution to return home without a passport.
The Committee for the Freedom of William Worthy was formed in 1962 and was chaired by A. Philip Randolph and Bishop D. Ward Nichols. In a telegram to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Randolph, James Farmer and James Forman noted that “white citizens who have come home without passports have never been prosecuted.” Big surprise!
Here is Phil Ochs’s Ballad of William Worthy
Phil had a way of driving home his point in very few words and the last line of the chorus of this song displays that very well!
Well, it’s of a bold reporter story I will tell
He went down to the Cuban land, the nearest place to hell
He’d been there many times before, but now the law does say
The only way to Cuba is with the CIA
Chorus
William Worthy isn’t worthy to enter our door
Went down to Cuba, he’s not American anymore
But somehow, it is strange to hear the State Department say
“You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay”
Five thousand dollars or a five year sentence may well be
For a man who had the nerve to think that travelin’ is free
Oh, why’d he waste his time to see a dictator’s reign
When he could have seen democracy by travelin’ on to Spain?
Chorus
William Worthy isn’t worthy to enter our door
Went down to Cuba, he’s not American anymore
But somehow, it is strange to hear the State Department say
“You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay”
So, come all you good travelers and fellow travelers, too
Yes, and travel all around the world, see every country through
I’d surely like to come along and see what may be new
But my passport’s disappearing as I sing these words to you
Well, there really is no need to travel to these evil lands
Yes, and though the list grows larger, you must try to understand
Try hard not to worry if someday you should hear
That the whole world is off limits, visit Disneyland this year
Chorus
William Worthy isn’t worthy to enter our door
Went down to Cuba, he’s not American anymore
But somehow, it is strange to hear the State Department say
“You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay”
