Catch the free book release of “All They Will Call You” at the City Lights Books in 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, California on Tuesday, February 7th at 7:00 pm.
All They Will Call You is the harrowing account of “the worst airplane disaster in California’s history,” which claimed the lives of thirty-two passengers, including twenty-eight Mexican citizens—farmworkers who were being deported by the U.S. government.
“Outraged that media reports omitted only the names of the Mexican passengers, American folk icon Woody Guthrie penned a poem that went on to become one of the most important protest songs of the twentieth century, ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee),’ an attempt to restore the dignity of the anonymous lives whose unidentified remains were buried in an unmarked mass grave in California’s Central Valley.
For nearly seven decades, the song’s message would be carried on by the greatest artists of our time, including Pete Seeger, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, yet the question posed in Guthrie’s lyrics, ‘Who are these friends all scattered like dry leaves?’ would remain unanswered—until now.”
