"Songs have always been
man's anodyne against
tyranny and terror;
the artist is on the side of humanity."
--Yip Harburg

YIP HARBURG: My songs, like “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” caused a great deal of furor during a period in Hollywood when a fellow by the name of Joe McCarthy was reigning supreme. And so, they got something up for people to take care of us, like me, called the blacklist. And I landed on the enemy list.


And in order to overcome the enemy list–– what was the enemy list? Well, it’s, one, that you were a red; another one, that you were a bluenose; and the other one, that you’re on the blacklist. Finally, I thought the rainbow was a wonderful symbol of all these lists. In order to overcome the enemy list and this rainbow that they gave me the idea for, I wrote this little poem:

Lives of great men all remind us
Greatness takes no easy way,
All the heroes of tomorrow
Are the heretics of today.
Socrates and Galileo,
John Brown, Thoreau, Christ and Debs
Heard the night cry “Down with traitors!”
And the dawn shout “Up the rebs!”
Nothing ever seems to bust them—
Gallows, crosses, prison bars;
Tho’ we try to readjust them
There they are among the stars.
Why do great men all remind us
We can write our names on high
and departing leave behind us
Thumb prints in the FBI.