Agnes "Sis" Cunningham (February 19, 1909 – June 27, 2004) was an American musician, best known as a performer and publicist of folk music and protest songs. She was the founding editor of Broadside magazine, which she published with her husband Gordon Friesen and their daughters.
Early life
Sis Cunningham was born in Watonga, Oklahoma in Blaine County. She was the daughter of Ada Boyce and William Cunningham, an amateur fiddler, and grew up on a small homestead farm situated on land that was once part of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Indian Reservation. Her father was a socialist and follower of Eugene Debs, the American Socialist Party leader. During her time there, she also studied labor journalism, labor-farmer union development, and social theatre. In late 1939, she was a founding member of the Red Dust Players, an agit-prop group in Oklahoma, that promoted propaganda and political agitation through short plays.
Sis Cunningham was also a songwriter. She wrote "How Can You Keep on Movin' (Unless You Migrate Too)?" which was featured on the New Lost City Ramblers' 1959 album Songs of the Depression. Ry Cooder later recorded the song as a strident march on his album Into the Purple Valley. The omission was pointed out to him; he and the label corrected the attribution on later pressings.
Her Dust Bowl tale, "My Oklahoma Home," written with her brother Bill Cunningham and performed by Seeger in 1961, fell into oblivion before it was revived by Bruce Springsteen in 2006 for his We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions album and subsequent Seeger Sessions Band Tour.
After World War II, Cunningham and Friesen were among the first victims of the anti-communist blacklist. She secured a few bookings as part of the roster of Pete Seeger's booking agency, People's Songs, but due to ill health, poverty, and depression, she largely fell out of the music world for over a decade.