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I've listened to John Lomax interviewing McTell several times and I come away with quite a different take than those who label JAL a racist because of it.

At that point in time the NAACP was becoming quite well known, having already created national protests against such things as D.W Griffith's Birth of a Nation, had Supreme Court decisions striking down some Jim Crow laws and various other high profile events. Lomax, spending so much time in Washington and NYC could not have been unaware of these events, and given his background, as pointed out by Peter, may very well have been sympathetic.

His interview of McTell seems to have two possible motives. First, obviously, would be to elicit the anti-white songs he is asking for, which no doubt did exist. As far as I know he was never able to collect such material. Secondly he could very well have felt it would be important for an artist like McTell to take an anti-Jim Crow stand. He did not have to release the recordings of the interview and could have timed their release at an appropriate time to good effect. As it was, the nervousness with which McTell ducks his questions is very revealing to an intelligent listener.

As a folklorist/historian Lomax's outlook would likely have been that a clear depiction of the past could have positive effect on the future. Even his stilted and obviously staged film clips of Leadbelly could have been an attempt to show current black-white relations as they were, with the hope of eliciting exactly the reaction that people express today. Not to glorify the situation, but to reveal the ugliness of it. The late '30s was not a time to present positive role models on film, as is prominent today, but a time to reveal the reality that so many were ignoring.

As to his financial dealings with the various artists he recorded. I have never heard that anyone got rich from selling the recordings or from publishing the songs. I'm sure the LoC budgets were quite limiting and the later Lomax business ventures were equally strapped. And the "contract" with the artists were not significantly different than those of, say, Mayo Williams or any other recording outfit.

To judge either Lomax on the basis of a few public records and to compare them, emotionally, to todays standards seems somewhat inappropriate to me. The very act of collecting the music and creating an awareness of the culture was a tremendous act to the good.

Reading meaning and motivation into any of the actions or statements of the Lomaxes or the artists involved, many, many years after the fact, seems to be somewhat presumptuous.

Wax