Trump’s Dad Was So Racist, Woody Guthrie Wrote A Song About It

In 1950, Woody Guthrie signed a lease for an apartment in Brooklyn; his landlord was Fred C. Trump

Weird History
7 min readMar 27, 2018

By Mariel Loveland

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Wikimedia Commons

In 2015, future President Donald Trump issued a seemingly innocuous — but increasingly portentous when put into context — statement: “My legacy has roots in my father’s legacy.” But it might be more than business acumen that has trickled down from the top of the gold-encrusted Trump family tree. Trump’s dad Fred had an unexpected occupant in one of his New York properties in the early 1950s: American singer-songwriter and social justice warrior Woody Guthrie. And guess what? Guthrie was no fan of “Old Man Trump.”

While contemporary musicians like Adele, Miley Cyrus, and Waka Flocka Flame have all taken to social media in order to criticize Donald Trump’s ideals, this was merely round two of musicians coming for the Trumps. Over 60 years ago, Guthrie was feverishly penning tunes lambasting Fred Trump for racist behavior. “Old Man Trump,” Guthrie’s song about Fred, exposed a dark world where the landlord and rumored KKK affiliate profited from an apartment complex that housed only white families. It included the scathing lines, “I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate/He stirred up in that…

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Weird History

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