Jim Garland

Who was Jim Garland?

Jim Garland was a songwriter from the coal mining country of eastern Kentucky, where he was involved with the communist-led National Miners Union during the violent labor conflicts of the early 1930s called the Harlan County War.

Garland came to New York City in 1931 with his older half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and later followed by sister Sarah Ogan where he participated in the Greenwich Village folk music scene. Two of his best-known songs are "The Death of Harry Simms" and "I Don't Want Your Millions, Mister."

During World War II he moved, together with Sarah's family, to Vancouver, Washington, to work in the shipyard. In 1944 he founded a broom factory which he ran for many years. Garland sang at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and his sister Sarah Ogan Gunning sang there in 1964.