Agnes Cunningham
b. 1909, Blaine County, Oklahoma, USA. After leaving school, Cunningham went to college, and later took up teaching. It was later, when she started teaching at the Commonwealth Labor College, in Arkansas, that she started writing songs and singing. She taught music, in 1937, at a socialist school in North Carolina, and upon her return home, became organizer for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. In 1939, Agnes worked with the Red Dust Players, presenting topical sketches and songs to sharecroppers and for the Oil Workers Union. In 1941, she married Gordon Friesen and subsequently moved to New York. Sis soon became involved with the Almanac Singers, with whom she occasionally sang and played accordion at union. From 1941-42, Friesen and Cunningham lived with Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger and Millard Lampell in Almanac House, in Greenwich Village. The married couple regularly composed new songs to fit old tunes, just to make them more topical. After the Almanac Singers ceased performing as such, Sis worked with Sonny Terryand Brownie McGhee, or with Guthrie and Cisco Houston, calling themselves the Almanacs. Along with her husband Friesen, Pete and Toshi Seeger, and Gil Turner, she founded BROADSIDE magazine, the first issue of which appeared in February 1962. One feather in its cap was providing the first publication of a Bob Dylan song, Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues. The magazine provided a platform for new songwriters in the folk field.