Jacqueline Steiner

Who is Jacqueline Steiner?

Jacqueline Steiner is an American folk singer, songwriter and social activist. Steiner is known for having written the lyrics to the song "M.T.A.", about a man stuck on the Boston subway because he could not pay the exit fare. "M.T.A." was co-written with Bess Lomax Hawes as part of a Boston political campaign in 1949 and later altered slightly by the popular folk group the Kingston Trio, becoming one of their hits in 1959.

Steiner graduated from Vassar College and attended graduate courses at Radcliffe College. She married Arnold Berman and was active in the folk scene in the 1950s and 60s, singing with Pete Seeger and others on Hootenanny Tonight!, recorded in 1954 and released by Folkways Records in 1959. As Jacqueline Sharpe, she released an album of antiwar songs in 1966 entitled No More War. Steiner is a linguist and demonstrated this interest in 1991 with her album Far Afield: Songs of Three Continents.