Ronnie Gilbert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ronnie Gilbert (born September 7, 1926) is an American folk singer. She is one of the original members of the Weavers with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman.

The Weavers were an influential folk-singing group that was blacklisted in the early 1950s, during a period of widespread anti-communist feeling, because of the group's left-wing sympathies.

Following the Weavers' dissolution in 1953 due to the blacklist, Gilbert continued her activism on a personal level, traveling to Cuba in 1961 on a trip that brought her back to the United States on the same day that country banned travel to Cuba. She also participated in the Parisian protests of 1968 after traveling to that country to work with British theatrical director Peter Brook. In the 1970s, Gilbert earned an M.A. in clinical psychology and worked as a therapist for a few years.

Gilbert was born in New York City, daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.[6] Her mother, Sarah, was a dressmaker and trade unionist, and her father, Charles Gilbert, was a factory worker.[7][8]

Gilbert was married to Martin Weg from 1950 until 1959, and the couple have one daughter, Lisa (born 1952). In 2004, Gilbert married her partner of almost two decades, Donna Korones, when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom temporarily legalized gay marriage in San Francisco.[9] Gilbert moved to Caspar, California in 2006