Nancy
Sweezy, Folklorist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQJ3UmPIhQ0
Nancy
Sweezy, a leading folklorist in the United
States,
died in Cambridge,
Massachusetts
on February 6. She was 88. Her daughter, Martha, confirmed that she died
peacefully after a long illness but added that she had continued her work until very near
the end. Ms. Sweezy
was known to a generation of musicians for her role as president of the board of directors
of the Club 47, a key venue in the folk music revival of 1960's and early '70's in Harvard
Square that hosted talents as varied as Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan, Bill Monroe,
Libba Cotten,
Tom Ashley and John Hurt among others. Ms. Sweezy helped to guide a generation of
performers, producers, managers and folk music enthusiasts. Her house on Agassiz
Street
in Cambridge
served as the gathering place for out-of-town performers and for aspiring
musicians to sit at the feet of mentors.
In
2006 the National Endowment for the Arts celebrated Ms. Sweezy's leadership
in the field of folk arts by presenting her with the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage
Fellowship at the Library of Congress. In declaring her a National Treasure the presenters made particular
note of her seminal role in reviving North
Carolina's
famed Jugtown Pottery. Living, working and applying her management, advocacy and people
skills at Jugtown in the late 1960's and early 1970's, Ms. Sweezy helped inspire a revival
of the traditional pottery community and watched it grow from seven potteries in the
Seagrove area when she first arrived to more than 115 today. In the fall of 2008,
Ms. Sweezy returned to Jugtown to be interviewed for the award-winning PBS series Craft in America.
Also
acknowledged during the National Heritage Fellowship presentation were Ms. Sweezy's work
with Ralph Rinzler, Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s annual
Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington D.C., her seminal book, "Raised in
Clay" for the Smithsonian Press on the Southern pottery tradition and a traveling
Smithsonian exhibition of the same name for which she put together a pottery collection
now in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection; her founding of the Refugee
Arts Group which collaborated with the Cambodian,
Hmong and other Southeast Asian communities in the preservation of their traditional
crafts and performing arts; and her authorship of the book Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity. This
book was compiled during more than a dozen trips to Armenia,
often with the artistic and logistical support of her son the photographer Sam Sweezy,
made during a time of considerable danger and unrest in Armenia
when Ms. Sweezy was in her 70's.
In
2005, when she was 84, Ms. Sweezy co-curated with potter Mark Hewitt, the North Carolina
Museum of Art's highly praised exhibition, The Potter's Eye: Art and Tradition in North
Carolina, and collaborated with Mr. Hewitt on the
companion book of the same title.
Born
on October
14, 1921
and educated at the Boston's
Museum School of Fine
Arts and the Stuart
School, Ms.
Sweezy's earlier life demonstrated a
similar taste for risk and adventure. When World War II broke out, she was offered a job
in the Research and Analysis Branch (R &A) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Her job was to assist in the analysis
of Germany’s
ability to fight the war. Soon, working with Chandler Morse, the Director of R &A, she
helped to coordinate this flow of information among the various U.S.
government agencies on a need-to-know basis.
In
November of 1944, Ms. Sweezy moved with her R & A section from Washington
D.C.
to London,
zigzagging across the Atlantic
on a bitterly rough trip in a convoy of blacked-out troop ships shielded by U.
S.
destroyers. In London
she joined her mentor and friend U.S. Ambassador Gil
Winant and his staff working in the streets during post-air raid rescue efforts.
As
the Allied armies prevailed, she moved with her section to the Continent, focusing on an
examination of the Morgenthau plan to de-Nazify Germany. She was in Paris
on Victory Europe day, walking the city all through its wild night of celebration and was
still there to attend the memorial service for FDR in Notre Dame Cathedral. After Paris,
as the U.S.
army moved rapidly across Europe
to reach Berlin
before the Russians, Ms.Sweezy
was sent to Weisbaden, Vienna,
and Berlin
where she went down into Hitler's bunker shortly after the Fuhrer's dual suicide with Eva
Braun.
It
was in Germany
that Ms. Sweezy developed a romantic relationship with her future husband, Paul M. Sweezy, the chief writer of the R & A reports.
In 1951
the New Hampshire Attorney General called upon Mr. Sweezy, a Harvard economist who later
became known as the dean of American Marxists,
to testify before the local New
Hampshire
un-American Activities Committee. His refusal to take refuge in the Fifth
Amendment or to answer questions about others resulted in the famous 1957 Supreme Court
case based on the First Amendment, Sweezy v. New
Hampshire,
which contributed to the end of the McCarthy era. It also resulted in social and political
pressure on Ms. Sweezy and her family. She and Paul Sweezy divorced in 1960.
Throughout
her life Ms. Sweezy was an advocate for human rights and a believer in the magic of music,
dance, and handmade objects to preserve the soul of a culture and its community. As an
intrepid author, teacher, and mentor she was a force in supporting immigrant traditions
before there were public folklife programs, funding streams, and endowed apprenticeships.
In addition to her youngest daughter, Martha Sweezy of Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
Ms. Sweezy is survived by her daughter Lybess Sweezy
of New
York City,
their older brother Samuel Sweezy of Arlington, Massachusetts,
five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
http://www.country-roads.org/ This is a
link to the Country Roads website where you can read more and contribute your memories of
Nancy and her work.
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