The Ghost of Tom Joad (song) The Ghost of Tom Joad (song) "The Ghost of Tom Joad" is a folk rock song written by Bruce Springsteen. It is the title track to his eleventh studio album, released in 1995. The character Tom Joad, from John Steinbeck's classic 1939 novel "The Grapes of Wrath", is mentioned in the title and narrative. Originally a quiet folk song, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" has also been recorded by Rage Against the Machine and Junip. Springsteen himself has performed the song in a variety of arrangements, including with the E Street Band, and a live recording featuring Rage Against the
Southern Tenant Farmers Union 1930s prepared an agricultural deterioration in southern states. When the Great Depression started, the southern agriculture sector had inherited weak foundations. In order to alleviate this sector, the federal government under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, through the New Deal, started economic incentives to reduce the production output of plantations; thereby, decreasing the number of sharecroppers and farmers needed in the fields. The implications of the policies from the AAA caused unemployment and the eviction of tenant farmers to raise dramatically. Harry Leland Mitchell, a socialist and sharecropper, and Clay East, a gasoline station owner, saw that the federal subsidies