Aunt Molly Jackson

Often referred to as the female Lead Belly, Aunt Molly Jackson was an instrumental figure in the movement for workers rights in the early part of the twentieth century. Raised in the hellish conditions of a 1900s Appalachian coal mining community, she became an outspoken advocate for miner's unions throughout the Depression Era. In the '30s, she recorded hundreds of songs for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress, keeping the traditions of Kentucky mountain music alive with both learned and self-penned folk songs that were primarily focused on the plight of the coal miners, protesting against the inhuman treatment suffered by them at the hands of pre-Union corporations. Jackson, along with Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, was one of the cataclysmic artists that sparked the Folk Revival boom of the '60s, and her work helped pave the way for the protest movements of that decade.