Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) was a pivotal American composer and musicologist, renowned for her groundbreaking modernist works like the String Quartet 1931 and her crucial role in preserving American folk music, becoming a key figure in the folk revival through her arrangements and family involvement with the Seegers. A trailblazer, she was the first woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition (1930) but shifted her focus to folk music after the Depression, marrying Charles Seeger and raising children who, like her stepson Pete Seeger, became folk music icons.