JACKSON, AUNT MOLLY
(1880–1960)
JACKSON, AUNT MOLLY (b. Mary Magdalene Garland, Clay County, Ky., 1880–September 1, 1960) Jackson was a union organizer and balladeer who wrote and performed some of the most stirring songs of the 1930s. She became a spokesperson for the coal miners in their struggle to obtain better working conditions, particularly among Northern, urban audiences, for whom she often performed in the mid-1930s and 1940s. The daughter of a coal miner, Jackson was politicized by the many disasters that she…