4 of Bob Dylan’s Most Moving Protest Songs

Bob Dylan didn’t much care for the label “protest singer.” Almost as soon as he asserted his dominance in that realm, he mostly moved on from strictly topical material. But the work he did in that department still looms large.

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These four songs prove that no one did it better when it came to bringing an issue to light and proving his case. People still look to them today to admire both Dylan’s songwriting skill and his willingness to speak truth to power.

“Masters Of War”

We sometimes forget that Bob Dylan’s debut album consisted mostly of covers of old folk and blues songs. It was as if he wasn’t going to sing his own words until he was sure they’d be able to live up to those standards. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album showed that he was ready for his songwriting close-up. And “Masters Of War” was one of the prime examples of his exploding brilliance. The insistent melody highlights the ferocity of the words, right down to when Dylan promises to stand leering over the graves of the titular entities. Many people misread this as a broadside against nations fighting wars. Dylan was really aiming at those who make profit from wars and killing.

“Only A Pawn In Their Game”

Because The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was such a revelation, it almost seems like its follow-up, The Times They Are-A Changin’, doesn’t get the respect it deserves as a masterpiece. If anything, Dylan fine-tuned his approach from the previous record, adding more subtlety to his passionate screeds. “Only A Pawn In Their Game” demonstrates this strategy. Dylan easily could have targeted his fury at the exact killers of the civil rights activist Medgar Evers. But instead, he goes deeper to suggest that players behind the scenes are just as much to blame. He does this ingeniously by following the trail from the actual bullet that felled Evers to the ultimate villains orchestrating the whole affair.

“The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll”

Dylan knew that “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” was a different sort of beast from his other protest material. In this particular song, he was calling out a single individual. William Zantzinger, a White scion of a tobacco family, beat Black barmaid Carroll several times with a cane at a party in Maryland in 1963. He did this while hurling racial insults at her in a drunken rage. She died shortly after the attack, but Zantzinger served only six months in prison for the crime. Dylan wielded every bit of his oratory power against Zantzinger, whose name he seems to have deliberately misspelled in the lyric sheet to ward off possible legal challenges to the song. It’s as powerful in its way as anything that he ever wrote.

“Hurricane”

Dylan returned to the protest song game after more than a decade away from it for “Hurricane”. He did it in response to the pleas of Rubin Carter, a former boxing champ in jail for a triple murder that he claimed he didn’t commit. Like many other songs on the Desire album, Dylan wrote the song with Jacques Levy, who came from the world of theater. Levy’s influence can be felt in the visuals that pop from the lyrics. Meanwhile, Dylan summons some of the withering social commentary from the early part of his career to round out the song. The popularity of the song, along with other efforts made by Dylan, helped bring attention to Carter’s case. Carter was eventually released in 1985 on the basis of not receiving a fair trial.

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