Woody Guthrie, e.g crossword

Woody Guthrie, a legendary American folk singer and songwriter, was often called an "Okie" - a word that points to his simple roots plus to the working class people he defended. He was born in Okemah, Oklahoma during the Great Depression and his songs echoed the pain but also the stubborn hope of those who lived through the dust storms, the job losses and the bank closures. His best known song, "This Land Is Your Land," turned into a lasting statement of what America claims to be - a place of wide rivers, tall wheat as well as open doors for everyone. He wrote more than a thousand songs, most of them about people who owned little and counted for less in the eyes of the powerful - field hands, freight train riders, families who followed the crops or slept in canvas tents. Outside the concert hall, Guthrie's music walked straight into the civil rights years. Protesters sang his lines while they marched, because the words said that every person, no matter how poor or how dark the skin, holds a right to dignity. He never flinched from turning a guitar into a signpost and that resolve still urges singers also organizers to keep going. Radio stations schoolrooms and picket lines still carry his tunes. From a small porch in Oklahoma to stages across the world, Woody Guthrie left proof that a plain melody married to a plain truth moves people farther than any speech.