Letters: Joan Baez Edinburgh connections should be honoured

It has long amazed me that someone with Joan's lifelong humanitarian, peace and civil rights activism (to say nothing of her art) has gone unrecognised by any major educational establishment in her mother's native city, writes Alan A Small.

American folk singer Joan Baez appeared at The Place jazz club in Edinburgh, October 1965. Picture: TSPL

Her mother, Joan Baez (née Bridge), referred to as Joan Senior or ‘Big Joan’, was born in Edinburgh, in 1913 as the second daughter of an English Anglican priest. Born in April 1913, she died on April 20, 2013, days after her 100th birthday

We have a long history in Scotland of poets, writers and singers being in the vanguard of movements for social change and freedom and throughout her life Joan has used her talent and art to highlight injustice and discrimination. In the current time of rising racism and continual deployment of weapons of terror on civilian populations across the globe, it would perhaps be fitting if the city or an Edinburgh educational institution would officially recognise one of the city’s granddaughter’s enormous lifetime contribution to music, humanitarian causes and world peace.

Her farewell tour in Edinburgh on 17 March 2018 could be an ideal opportunity to honour her work.

Alan A Small, Upper Mill Street, Tillicoultry