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Unpublished Woody Guthrie Lyrics Rail Against Donald Trump's Father

TULSA (CBS SF) -- A British professor of American literature and culture has found unpublished writings by iconic folk singer Woody Guthrie directing venom at Donald Trump's real estate mogul father Fred for his racist housing practices, according to an article posted Thursday.

University of Central Lancashire Professor Will Kaufman, who has written a political biography on Woody Guthrie in addition to several books on American culture, published the story on TheConversation.com that outlined his recent research at the folk singer's archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The unpublished writings along with a copy of a lease to a Brooklyn apartment signed in December of 1950 by both Guthrie and Fred Trump inextricably linked the firebrand folkie to the father of the current Republican presidential frontrunner. "They clearly pit America's national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire," Kaufman writes.

Guthrie would reside at the Trump-controlled Brooklyn housing project known Beach Haven for  two years, learning too late of what Kaufman terms Fred Trump's "enthusiastic embrace of the FHA's guidelines for avoiding 'inharmonious uses of housing'" or, in other words, discouraging the sale or rental of homes to African Americans in predominantly white areas.

The article goes on to quote the following unpublished passage to illustrate Guthrie's disdain for the racist housing code Fred Trump perpetuated:

"I suppose

Old Man Trump knows

Just how much

Racial Hate he stirred up

In the bloodpot of human hearts

When he drawed

That color line

Here at his

Eighteen hundred family project ...."

In another passage, the songwriter recast his ballad "I Ain't Got No Home" as a savage attack on the elder Trump and his projects.

"Beach Haven ain't my home!

I just cain't pay this rent!

My money's down the drain!

And my soul is badly bent!

Beach Haven looks like heaven

Where no black ones come to roam!

No, no, no! Old Man Trump!

Old Beach Haven ain't my home!"

The Trump real estate empire would be accused of racially discriminatory practices in the 1970s with two cases brought against the business by the U.S. Justice Department, cases that were well documented in reporting by both the New York Times and the Village Voice.

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