Sarah Ogan Gunning (June 28, 1910 – November 14, 1983) was an American singer and songwriter from the coal mining country of eastern Kentucky, as were her older half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and her brother Jim Garland.
The ensuing violence and controversy pushed many NMU leaders and persons involved in union activity, including Ogan and her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson, to leave the state.
In New York, they met many leaders of the folksong revival, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Huddie Ledbetter, and Earl Robinson.
But Andrew Ogan had TB, and when the illness worsened he moved back to Brush Creek in Knox County, Kentucky, where he died in August 1938.
In August 1963 folklorist Archie Green visited Sarah in Detroit to follow up interviews he had done with her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson.
Green joined forces with Wayne State University faculty Ellen Stekert and Oscar Paskal to record Sarah in January and March 1964 in the studios of WDET and the United Auto Workers Solidarity House.