Woody Guthrie

Writer and performer of folk songs, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-1967) composed "This Land Is Your Land," an unofficial national anthem.

Guthrie was born July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma. He had little formal education, for which he compensated to a degree with intensive reading. Guthrie led one of the most tragic lives of any notable American. His father was a failure in both politics and business and died on skid row. His mother killed his only sister in an insane rage before dying of Huntington's chorea, which she passed on to Guthrie. In later years Guthrie lost his own infant daughter in a fire. Virtually orphaned at the age of 14 when his family broke up, Guthrie developed an itinerant way of life that he never entirely abandoned until his final hospitalization.

Folk singer, composer, writer and homegrown radical, Woody Guthrie became the self-appointed folk spokesman for the Dust Bowl migrants and agricultural workers during the Great Depression. His pro-labor/anti-capitalist stance attracted many radical and left-leaning liberals during the 1930s and 1940s, but his lasting fame came from his influence on the folk revival of the 1960s, especially on Bob Dylan. Best known for ballads such as "This Land is Your Land," "This Train is Bound for Glory," and "Union Maid," Guthrie's music extended beyond the bounds of radical protest to become American folk classics.