On This Day In Alabama History: Folklorist Ruby Pickens Tartt Was Born

By Graydon Rust Alabama 200

January 13, 1880

Folklorist Ruby Pickens Tartt was born in Livingston. A noted author and painter, Tartt is best known for preserving the culture of Sumter County through the Federal Writers’ Project and the Library of Congress during the Great Depression. Tartt collected the life stories and folktales of former slaves and recorded more than 800 folk songs, stories and photographs of singers with ethnomusicologist John Lomax for the Archive of American Folk Songs. Lomax later released many of the recordings through record sets, including those of local cook and washerwoman Vera Hall Ward, who is now considered one of the 20th century’s finest singers of blues and spirituals. Tartt was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 1980.

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