Guy Carawan
*Guy Carawan was born on this date in 1927. He was a white-American folk musician and musicologist.
Guy Hughes Carawan Jr. was born in California to parents from the South. 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, worked as an asbestos contractor. He described his parents: "He was a poor farm boy, and she was a Charlestonian blue blood."
He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Occidental College in 1949 and a master's degree in sociology from UCLA. Through his friend Frank Hamilton, Carawan was introduced to musicians in the People's Songs network. Moving to New York City, he became involved with the American folk music revival in Greenwich Village in the 1950s. Carawan first visited the Highlander Folk School in 1953, accompanied by singers Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Hamilton. At Seeger's recommendation, he returned in 1959 as a volunteer, taking charge of the music program pioneered by Zilphia Horton, who had died in an accident in 1956.
At Highlander's April 1956 workshop, Carawan met Candie Anderson, an exchange student at Fisk University in Nashville, who was from Pomona College in California. She was an early white student participant in the sit-in movement. Carawan is best known for reintroducing the protest song "We Shall Overcome" to the school when he became its new music director in 1959. As a couple, they traveled the South, hosting workshops to encourage people to embrace the music of the American Civil Rights Movement. They also travelled the world, influencing activists. They visited England and attended the World Festival of Youth and Students in the Soviet Union in 1957, then continued to the People's Republic of China.
The couple married in March 1961. Carawan and his wife lived in New Market, near the Highlander Center. He was the musical director at Highlander till his retirement in the late 1980s. Guy Carawan died on May 2, 2015. The Guy and Candie Carawan Collection (1955-2010) is in the Southern Folklife Collection of the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
