Guy Carawan

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Guy Carawan (b. Los Angeles, California, United States, July 27, 1927) is an American folk musician and Music Director and Song Leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. He is famous for introducing the protest song "We Shall Overcome" to the American Civil Rights Movement, by teaching it to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Carawan had learned the song from Pete Seeger in the early 1950s.

Carawan was born in California in 1927, to Southern parents. His mother, from Charleston, South Carolina, was the resident poet at Winthrop College (now Winthrop University) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and his father, a veteran of World War I from North Carolina who worked as an asbestos contractor.

He moved to New York City, where he became involved with the Greenwich Village folk music revival. He sings and plays banjo, guitar, and hammered dulcimer, and frequently performs and records with his wife, singer Candie Carawan. Occasionally he is accompanied by son Evan Carawan, who plays mandolin and hammered dulcimer.

Carawan and his wife live in Jefferson County, East Tennessee.

[edit] References

• Neely, Jack (2005). Lifelong Students, Eternal Activists. Metro Pulse.