Odetta Birthplace — Birmingham, Alabama

Odetta Holmes — known to the world simply as Odetta — was born on 31 December 1930 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was six years old, and it was in California that she received formal vocal training and discovered folk music, eventually becoming one of the most powerful and commanding voices in the American folk revival. Birmingham in 1930 was a city defined by its steel industry, its extreme racial segregation, and the particular version of African American musical culture — gospel, blues, work songs — that would flow through Odetta's music for the rest of her life, even after she had travelled far from the South.

Odetta became the 'Voice of the Civil Rights Movement' — a phrase attributed to Martin Luther King Jr., who called her that in recognition of her role in the movement and her presence at the 1963 March on Washington, where she performed before a crowd of 250,000 people shortly before King delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech. Her music drew on the full breadth of the African American folk tradition — chain gang songs, spirituals, blues, ballads — and delivered it with a physical and emotional power that made audiences feel the weight of history in each song. Bob Dylan credited her as a primary influence, saying he wanted to sound like Odetta when he first began performing. Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and Mavis Staples have all cited her as foundational to their understanding of what folk music could do.

Birmingham has no formal Odetta heritage marker at her birthplace. The city's civil rights history is documented at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the 16th Street Baptist Church, both of which are connected to the broader story of which Odetta was a part. She died on 2 December 2008 in New York City at the age of 77, on the day she had been scheduled to perform at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration celebration.