Born July 14, 1912

Okemah, Oklahoma

Died October 3, 1967

New York, New York

Folk singer whose songs raised consciousness about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s

Woody Guthrie. Getty Images.

"This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me."

Woody Guthrie was the foremost composer of folk music in twentieth-century America. His hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, is just the sort of place one would expect him to be from. He once described Okemah as "one of the singiest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns."

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