The words are by Malvina Reynolds. In the notes to her songbook Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs, Malvina writes:         In May, 1960, the House UnAmerican Committee came to         San Francisco and subpoenaed, amongst others, a university student. The tune is the traditional American "Billy Boy". In the late December 1962 edition of Broadside Magazine, in notes to Malvina Reynolds song "The H.U.A.C." they wrote:         Her "Billy Boy"... told of the H.U.A.C. hearings in San Francisco several years         ago in which students and others unsympathetic to the Committee         were clubbed and washed away with fire hoses. "Bi1ly Boy" now has the         distinction of being printed up in a report by H.U.A.C. itself. The         report has the rather far-out title of "The Communist Party's Cold War         Against Congressional Investigation of Subversion". About 50 pages in         length it can be obtained free from the Committee on Un-American Activities,         N.E.O.B., Washington 25, D.C. Other songs by Malvina Reynolds in this section are:     "The Bankers and the Diplomats"     "I Want to Go to Andorra"     "It Isn't Nice"     "Little Boxes"     "What Have They Done to the Rain".