The Tragedy Behind a Woody Guthrie Classic--Even More Haunting Today

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One of the greatest songs of the past century—its lyrics perhaps even more meaningful today—was inspired by an AP article carried by The New York Times near the end of January 1948. A local folk singer and songwriter named Woody Guthrie, an avid consumer of news, was immediately appalled. Over the past decade or so he had already written “This Land is Your Land,” “So Long It’s Been Good to Know Ya,” “Vigilante Man,” “Pastures of Plenty” and a dozen other classics, but this story, and similar reports on the radio, disturbed him mightily.

Fresno, Calif., Jan. 28 (AP) — A chartered Immigration Service plane crashed and burned in western Fresno County this morning, killing twenty-eight Mexican deportees, the crew of three and an Immigration guard. Irving F. Wixon, director of the Federal Immigration Service at San Francisco, said that the Mexicans were being flown to the deportation center at El Centro, Calif., for return to their country. The group included Mexican nationals who entered the United States Illegally, and others who stayed beyond duration of work contracts in California, he added. All were agricultural workers.

The crew was identified as Frank Atkinson, 32 years old, of Long Beach, the pilot; Mrs. Bobbie Atkinson, his wife, stewardess, 28; and Marion Ewing of Balboa, copilot, 33. The guard was identified as Frank E. Chaffin of Berkeley.

The plane, which was chartered from Airline Transport Carriers of Burbank, was southbound from the Oakland airport, when it crashed in view of some 100 road camp workers. Foreman Frank V. Johnson said that it "appeared to explode and a wing fell off" before it plummeted to the ground. A number of those in the plane appeared to jump or fall before the aircraft hit the earth, he added. The wreckage was enveloped in flames when the fuel tanks ignited. Not until the fire died down were rescuers able to get near the plane. By then, there was nothing to be done but to extricate the bodies. The scene of the crash is in the mountains about twenty miles west of Coalinga, in the rough coastal area.

It was the worst aviation accident in the state’s history. An investigation would find evidence of an oil leak but also: The pilot, perhaps accidentally, had taken the wrong plane; the aircraft had exceeded the time for its mandatory safety checkup; and the passenger load surpassed its legal maximum, so that three or more migrants had to stand or sit in the aisles without safety belts.

Other news media covered the crash, and even the California papers failed to name any of the passengers. Guthrie was outraged that the same news outlets IDed the pilots, stewardess and Immigration officer. So he sat down and wrote (as he often did) a poem without a particular melody in mind. It included two of the most poetic and devastating lines in American literature:

Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

The 28 migrants would be buried in a mass grave in Fresno with no names on a small marker. The airline company received a large insurance payment and continued operating until 1953.

Gurthrie also felt anger, expressed in the opening lines of the song, over the policy of destroying crops to keep prices high while farmworkers and others remained hungry.

With Woody sidelined by Huntington’s disease, Pete Seeger began chanting the lyrics at concerts. Almost a decade would pass before a young Colorado singer and school teacher named Martin Hoffman would set it to music and Woody’s old pals, Seeger and Cisco Houston, would begin to popularize it. It was titled “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” or just “Deportee” and considered by many Guthrie’s last great creation before his long descent into illness.

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps.
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life.
My brothers and sisters came working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We die in your hills, we die in your deserts,
We die in your valleys and die on your plains.
We die 'neath your trees and we die in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we die just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills.
Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

© 1961 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

The song, of course, has been widely covered; a partial list: Springsteen, Gene Clark, Nanci Griffith, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Judy Collins, a very young Joni Mitchell. I may have first heard it on a Byrds album around 1969, but much preferred the Arlo Guthrie version a few years later. Joan Baez, who is part-Mexican, has always delivered a moving version but her duet with Dylan during Rolling Thunder did not go so well (you can find it on YouTube). I recently discovered this version, by Ani DiFranco and my man Ry Cooder, for the celebration of Woody’s 100th birthday at the Kennedy Center a few years back:

Baez chose to perform it, from all her career highlights, when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017:

And we must include Arlo, here with Emmylou Harris:

And from Bruce, a huge Woody and Seeger fan, as he accepted an award from the Guthrie Center:

Now a few post-scripts. Cesar Chavez would claim the crash and Guthrie’s account helped sparked his activism for Chicano farmworkers "as important human beings and not as agricultural implements." Judy Collins heard her first Woody song when Martin Hoffman performed “Deportee” at her camp as a teen. They became friends, he drifted a bit, and committed suicide in 1971. She then wrote the sad, lovely “Song for Martin,” you can listen here.

For decades, the full names of the dead and buried “deportees” would remain sketchy or incorrect. Then a writer named Tim Z. Hernandez, after coming across a few articles and the nearly unmarked grave in Fresno, spent many years researching a book (“All They Will Call You“), finding surviving family members, and pushing for a full accounting. Finally in 2013 this led to a new grave stone and memorial, listing every name (see below). Another memorial was dedicated near the crash site just last September, with members of the Guthrie family attending and his song performed. And all the names read aloud.

The Devil Wears Donald