Archie Green
(June 29, 1917- March 22, 2009)
Shipwright, organizer, scholar, folklorist, teacher: Archie Green was a small man, and a giant. He made pioneering contributions in folklore and in ways of valuing, understanding and supporting the culture and experiences of working people. Below are links to his own words, and a small sampling of the appreciations shared by people whose lives were different because of Archie: writers (and working people who became writers because of him), activists, scholars, friends, a wide network of friends of Archie. I met Archie in 1975, at the Archive of American Folklore at the Library of Congress. He was lobbying to start the American Folkife Center. I was an undergraduate, volunteering (during off-time from my job selling cheese at a gourmet grocery store) at the Archive, investigating the collections of Robert Winslow Gordon, the Archive's founder. Archie took time with me, as he did with literally thousands of others (regardless of our backgrounds, qualifications or lack of them, especially supportive of working-class people and kids of working-class people), asking important questions about Gordon and his work: Why did the American government decide in 1924 that it was (finally) appropriate to support study of folk culture? What was the social context of this sea-change in cultural policy? Who was this man Gordon and why has his role been obscured and forgotten? Archie set me on a course into folklore, and I was lucky to be his friend and student over the next 34 years. There were always questions, and assignments forthcoming, and wonderful arguments and discussions about theory and practice, unfolding in long walks, in seminar rooms at the University of Texas, in his home on Caselli Avenue in San Francisco. His work in public folklore, his attention to working people, and his progressive politics more than helped to create the way that many people have walked. If you didn't know Archie, you can start here.
A radiator man, the kind of whimsical folk art made by working people in spare time and from spare parts, stands at the door of the Folklore Project office now, part of our "Storied Objects" exhibition: a housewarming gift to PFP from Archie (and our friend, folklorist Roger Abrahams). Now I enter PFP with Archie much on my mind. . . (Photo: Archie Green with "Mr. Dixie", an 11-foot-tall tin man - the subject of one of his books - at Dixie Sheet Metal Works, Falls Church, Virginia. Photo by David A. Taylor, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress). - Debora Kodish
Read appreciations and reflections:
- Julie Ardery writes about Archie: Archie Green (1917-2009): Called to Labor, in the Daily Yonder
- The American Folklife Center has a biography and links
- NPR broadcast a tribute
- Obituaries in the New York Times and LA Times
- "Archie Green was the Real America" (Roger Simon in Chicago Sun-Times)
- Scholar Bob Cantwell, in UNC Press Blog
Hear him yourself:
- On his early work experience and impressions of pilebutts, on Folkstreams
- On the history of public folklore, and the lobbying that led to the American Folklife Preservation Act and the founding of the American Folklife Center (Public Folklore: The Watershed Years, on the Folkstreams YouTube channel).
