About John Greenway

John Greenway (15 December 1919 – 15 October 1991) was born Johannes Groeneweg in Liverpool, England. He was a noted author, singer and scholar who focused on American folk songs of protest.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where his dissertation was on "American Folksongs of Social and Economic Protest." It was later published as American Folksongs of Protest (University of Pennsylvania Press 1953), which was the standard work in the field for 40 years. He also studied protest folk songs in Australia. He recorded The Great American Bum and Other Hobo and Migratory Workers' Songs, and American Industrial Folksongs, both released by Riverside Records. In the 1950s he was a Professor of English at University of Denver. He was professor of anthropology in the late 1960s through the 1970s at the University of Colorado in Boulder, at times angering the establishment there.