Pistol Packin' Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong

Meet Aunt Molly Jackson (1880-1960), one of American folklore's most
fascinating characters.
A coal miner's daughter, she grew up in eastern Kentucky, married a miner,
and became a midwife, labor activist, and songwriter. Fusing hard experience
with rich Appalachian musical tradition, her songs became weapons of struggle.
In 1931, at age fifty, she was "discovered" and brought north,
sponsored and befriended by an illustrious circle of left-wing intellectuals
and musicians, including Theodore Dreiser, Alan Lomax, and Charles Seeger
and his son Pete. Along with Sarah Ogan Gunning, Jim Garland (two of Aunt
Molly's half-siblings), Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and other folk musicians,
she served as a cultural broker, linking the rural working poor to big-city
left-wing activism.
Shelly Romalis draws upon interviews and archival materials to construct
this portrait of an Appalachian woman who remained radical, raucous, proud,
poetic, offensive, self-involved, and in spirit the "real" pistol
packin' mama of the song.
"Mr. Coal operator call me anything you please, blue, green, or
red, I aim to see to it that these Kentucky coalminers will not dig your
coal while their little children are crying and dying for milk and bread."

-- Aunt Molly Jackson