The Tragic Life of Woody Guthrie Quiz

Answer: Tulsa

Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912. His father later moved to Pampa, Texas, and eventually sent for Woody to join him there. Woody later travelled around the country. The Woody Guthrie center opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2013 and serves as a museum and archive with numerous interactive exhibits.

Answer: Governor of New Jersey

Woody's parents must have been impressed with the 1912 Democratic nominee for president, because they named Woody after him before the man was even elected to the presidency. The Democratic primaries ended on June 4, 1912, and Woodrow Wilson, then the Governor of New Jersey, won his party's nomination with 44.6% of the vote.

He had not yet been elected president when Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, but later that year he became the 28th (not 25th) President of the United States.

Answer: California

Dust storms plagued Oklahoma during this era, and scores of native Oklahomans fled to California seeking work. In 1938, Woody left behind his wife and children Gwendolyn, Sue, and Bill. In Los Angeles, Woody worked at the KFVD radio station and wrote a column for "People's World." The couple eventually divorced in 1940. Both of Guthrie's daughters from his first marriage died of Huntington's disease (inherited from their father) when they were just 41, and his son died even younger, in his 20s, in an auto-train accident, along with Woody's first wife Mary.

Answer: Aliza Greenblatt

Woody Guthrie's second wife was Marjorie Greenblatt, a dancer who went by the stage name of Marjorie Mazia. She and Woody had four children: Cathy, Arlo, Joady, and Nora. Woody Guthrie wrote a number of Jewish lyrics with Marjorie's mother Aliza Greenblatt, who was a Yiddish poet.

His daughter Nora created an annual multimedia presentation called "Holy Ground: Woody Guthrie's Yiddish Connection," which includes storytelling, writings, artwork, and music.

Answer: He suffered third degree burns from a barn fire during a hootenanny

The first tragic fire was when his new house burned down during his toddlerhood, before they could even move into it. At another time, according to biographer Joe Klein, Woody's mother Nora insisted that Woody's sister Clara stay home from school to help with housework. In protest, Clara set her clothes on fire with the intention of scaring her mother and quickly putting out the flames, but she was unable to do so before much damage was done, and she died the next day from the burns.

More fires were to come. In 1927, according to Klein, Woody's mother Nora, plagued by a loss of mental control from Huntington's disease and upset with Charles Guthrie after several financial failures and relocations, set him on fire. Charley survived, and Nora was put into an insane asylum for the rest of her life. Years later, in 1947, Woody's own daughter Cathy died in an apartment fire caused by faulty electrical wiring.

Answer: Don't Kill My Baby and Son

Charles Guthrie became a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan beginning around 1915, and he had earlier, according to later reports by Woody Guthrie, participated in the 1911 lynching of two African-Americans, a mother and son, Laura and L. D. Nelson, who were snatched from their cells in county jail, where they were being held until trial under the charge of participating in the murder of an Okfuskee County deputy sheriff. Guthrie was horrified to learn of his father's reported participation in the lynching, and he wrote three songs about the event, including "Don't Kill My Baby and Son."

Answer: She was put up for adoption by her parents and died in a car crash as a teenager

Woody Guthrie married his third wife, Anneke Van Kirkand, in 1953, shortly after his divorce from Marjorie. They divorced a short time later, in 1954, and had one child, Lorina Lynn. After they divorced, Woody and Anneke allowed a couple they knew to adopt their daughter Lorina Lynn.

The girl later tragically died in a car crash in California in 1973, at the young age of 19. After her adoption, she had no further contact with Woody Guthrie.

Answer: Communism

Although Guthrie never publicly declared himself a communist, he was a vocal admirer of Stalin and supported communist victory in the Korean War. He was anti-fascist, however, and had a guitar that read "This machine kills fascists." According to friends Gordon Friesen and Sis Cunningham, he was a member of the same Communist Party club as they were, and Pete Seeger confirmed this, though there is no record of Woody himself claiming to be a member. Woody Guthrie was on the FBI's Security Index into the 1960s.

Answer: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was a great admirer of Woody Guthrie's and met him before he died. He played Woody's songs for him, as well as a song of his own he'd written in honor of the man. Dylan's "Song to Woody" appeared on his debut album "Bob Dylan" in 1962. In 2022, the Bob Dylan center opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the same street as the Woody Guthrie center.

Answer: New York

Woody Guthrie died at the age of 57, on October 3, 1967, in New York City. In 1968, Harold Leventhal produced "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie" at Carnegie Hall featuring musicians ranging from Bob Dylan and Judy Collins to Richie Havens, Odetta, and Pete Seeger.

In 1998, the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival (a.k.a. "WoodyFest") began to be held annually in his honor in July (the month of his birth).