Si Kahn
Musician · b. 1944 · State College, Pennsylvania
Best known for
Songwriter
Si Kahn is an American folk singer-songwriter, civil-rights and labor organizer, and founder of the nonprofit Grassroots Leadership. His 1974 song “Aragon Mill” — written after the closure of a Georgia textile mill threw 700 workers out of their jobs — has entered the standard country and bluegrass repertoire through recordings by Hazel Dickens, the Cox Family, and the Boys of the Lough.
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- Born April 23, 1944, into a rabbinical family in State College, Pennsylvania.
- Graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1965.
- Began civil-rights organizing in 1965 with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Forrest City, Arkansas.
- Worked through the late 1960s and 1970s as an organizer with the United Mine Workers (including the 1973–74 Brookside Strike in Kentucky) and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (the J. P. Stevens campaign).
- Wrote “Aragon Mill” in 1974 after spending several days in Aragon, Georgia following the closure of a textile mill that had supported the town.
- Founded the nonprofit Grassroots Leadership and led it until his 2010 retirement.
- Earned a PhD in American Studies from the Union Institute in 1995.
- Inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame in 2015.
