Local history: Poet Carl Sandburg feared for future in 1940 Akron talk

War raged in Europe, propaganda filled the airwaves, politicians muzzled free speech and Americans doubted the truth.

No, we’re not talking about current events.

U.S. poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) voiced concerns about the future — in his typical, pleasant manner — during a visit to Akron in March 1940.

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“There are plenty of men in America who could speak to you tonight, and tell you what is wrong with our world,” Sandburg told the audience at Central High School. “There are plenty of men, but I am not one of them. I may give you the confessions of a troubled man.”

The silver-haired troubadour, then 62 years old, appeared March 5 at the invitation of the Akron Teachers’ Association. The Tuesday evening talk cost 50 cents.

As a poet, folk singer, biographer and journalist, the Pulitzer-winning writer was difficult to categorize. The Illinois-born author, a former Chicago newspaperman, was living in southwest Michigan and touring the Midwest to promote his most recent work. 

“Abraham Lincoln: The War Years” (1939), the four-volume sequel to Sandburg’s two-volume tome “Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years” (1926), was being hailed as an American masterpiece.

“Carl Sandburg, a folksy, earthy man with a language-loving voice, a born entertainer’s command of moods and sense of audience reaction, held a jam-packed crowd under his spell with words and music last night at Central high school auditorium,” Beacon Journal reporter Keyes Beech wrote.

Sandburg told the audience that he had been riding on a train through Missouri a few months earlier when he overheard a conversation between two railroad workers.

“What do you know — for sure?” a brakeman asked.

“Not a damn thing,” the fireman replied.

‘A fog over the world’

“There is a fog over the world and although nothing is known ‘for sure,’ I can at least speak frankly,” he said.

Adolf Hitler was on the march in Europe. Germany had invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and was preparing in 1940 to attack Denmark, Norway, Belgium and France. While Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany, the United States wouldn’t enter the conflict for another 21 months.

Sandburg urged his Akron audience to be careful when speaking and listening. It was imperative to separate facts from fiction.

“Every thoughtful man and woman should take counsel and take heed of what they say to friends and neighbors,” he said.

He told the audience to beware of propaganda. Something that might sound good could be sinister — or vice versa.

“It is with us every hour of the day, over the radio and in the newspapers,” he said. “There is no regard for the truth. … Be very sober and deliberate in what you accept.”

The struggle for civilization and freedom might not always be physical, he explained. It might be a conflict of ideas, but “there can be no shrinking from the issues of the hour,” he noted.

‘A readiness for misconstruction’

Sandburg praised President Lincoln for having the gift of “scrupulous utterance.” Lincoln weighed his words carefully, avoided rash statements and acknowledged when he didn’t know all the answers, his biographer said.

“Were I a teacher, I would not feel free to be candid and honest, for there is abroad in the land a spirit of inquisitiveness, a readiness for misconstruction,” he said.

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Sandburg pointedly criticized the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by Texas congressman Martin Dies Jr., for investigating private citizens suspected of having ties to fascists or communists. He lamented what the committee had “done to free speech, but it is one of the signs of the times — a storm signal that goes with a crisis — the beauty and holiness of free speech and discussion have been soiled and polluted.”

The lecture was over. It was time to entertain.

Sandburg recited lines from “The People, Yes,” his 1936 epic poem about American culture. Then he pulled out his well-worn guitar and regaled the Akron audience with tunes from “The American Songbag,” his 1927 anthology of folk music.

In a low baritone voice, he sang: “Great Gawd, I’m feelin’ bad. I ain’t got the man I thought I had. Great Gawd, I’m feelin’ bad. I ain’t got the man I thought I had.”

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Two months after speaking in Akron, Sandburg won the 1940 Pulitzer for History for his most recent biography on Lincoln.

Conflict continued to engulf the globe. Soon the United States would be drawn into World War II.

Beech, the Akron reporter who covered Sandburg’s speech, would join the U.S. Marines, serve as a war correspondent and win a Pulitzer for his reporting.

And Sandburg would continue to seek the truth and predict the future.

“We are living in an hour now, whether we wish it or not, when we’re going to be controlled by events,” he warned in March 1940. “We may sit alone and think out the way that seems right as judged by the nations of the world now. 

“But the long, dark past is preparing events against which we’re helpless and which put us in the hands of Providence — hands beyond our own little helpless ones.”

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.