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Biographical Note
George Korson, folklorist, journalist, and labor historian, was born in 1899 in Ukraine, and came with his family to the U.S. in 1906. He began his working life as a journalist, and subsequently wrote several books on the songs and folklore of coal miners in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Korson was an advocate for the rights of miners and improved working conditions for them. In 1957 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to write the book Black Rock. He was a president of the American Red Cross, served three terms as president of the Pennsylvania Folklore Society, and was elected a Fellow of the American Folklore Society in 1960. He died in 1967.