Woody Guthrie Birthplace — Okemah, Oklahoma

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma — a small Okfuskee County town in the oil and cotton country of central Oklahoma. His childhood was marked by a series of tragedies: his sister died in a fire, his mother was committed to a mental institution (later revealed to have Huntington's disease, which Woody would eventually inherit), and the family lost their house. He drifted through Texas and the Southwest as a teenager, learning guitar and developing the direct, plain-spoken singing style that would make him the most important figure in American folk music.

Guthrie migrated to California during the Dust Bowl exodus, encountered the misery of the migrant camps firsthand, and began writing the songs that defined the era: "This Land Is Your Land," "Pastures of Plenty," "Dust Bowl Blues," "Do Re Mi," "I Ain't Got No Home." His radio broadcasts, recordings, and tireless advocacy for working people and union labour made him the patron saint of American protest music. He was the primary influence on Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, and virtually every folk singer who followed. "This Land Is Your Land," written as a riposte to the false cheerfulness of "God Bless America," is a genuinely complex political document disguised as a simple patriotic song.

Okemah holds an annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival each July — one of the most emotionally significant music pilgrimages in America. The town has had a complicated relationship with its most famous son (he was a committed leftist in a conservative state), but has come to celebrate him. The Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opened in 2013, holds his archives and is an outstanding museum.