Ruth Alice "Ronnie" Gilbert (September 7, 1926 – June 6, 2015), was an American folk singer, songwriter, actress and political activist.

She was one of the original members of the music quartet the Weavers, as a contralto with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman.

[3] Her mother, Sarah, came from Warsaw, Poland[4] and was a dressmaker and trade unionist, and her father, Charles Gilbert, came from Ukraine and was a factory worker.

[1][5] From a young age she had a strong sense of social justice and gave credit for this to her mother who had been involved with the Polish-Jewish Bund.

[6] She went to Anacostia High School and was almost expelled because of her resistance to participating in a blackface minstrel show with white students, citing Paul Robeson's "denunciations of racism.

"[6] Gilbert came to Washington, D.C., during World War II at the age of 16, took a government job and joined a protest folk-singing group, the Priority Ramblers.

[9][10] In 1968, she appeared on Broadway in a dramatic, non-musical role—the concentration camp survivor Mrs. Rosen—in the original production of Robert Shaw's play The Man in the Glass Booth.

[5][12] Gilbert later said that at the time, she needed a change from her career on Broadway, her daughter was grown up and she "fell into" therapy, including Gestalt, Freudian and Jungian practices.

The film-maker left the camera running after the Near interview, capturing Near and Gilbert as they sang "Hay Una Mujer."

[10] During that period Gilbert wrote and appeared in a one-woman show about Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, the Irish-American activist and labor organizer, and in a second work based on author Studs Terkel's book, Coming of Age.

[6] In 1991, Gilbert recorded "Lincoln and Liberty" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" for the compilation album, Songs of the Civil War.

[1] In 2004, when gay marriage was temporarily legalized in San Francisco, Gilbert married Donna Korones, her manager and partner of almost two decades.