Bev Grant

Bev Grant is a musician, photographer, filmmaker, single parent, grandmother and activist. Winner of the 2017 ASCAP Foundation Jay Gorney award, the 2017 Labor Heritage Foundation Joe Hill Award and the 2022 Brooklyn For Peace PathMaker to Peace award, Bev Grant grew up singing and playing in Portland, Oregon in a band with two of her sisters.

She moved to New York City in 1962 and worked full time as a clerical worker until 2007 while devoting herself to topical songwriting and social activism. She joined New York Radical Women and NY Newsreel (now Third World Newsreel) in 1967. A book of her black and white photographs, Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972 (2018) includes documentation of the 1968 Miss America Beauty Pageant protest, the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast for children programs and the Moratorium Against the Viet Nam war.

She formed her band The Human Condition in 1971, featured on the Grammy-nominated Best of Broadside collection, and recorded The Working People Gonna Rise and Kulonyaka. She was founder and director of the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus from 1997 until she retired in 2022, producing two cds. She joined the staff of the UALE Summer School for Working Women in 1991, developing a multi-media women’s labor history show. The title song “We Were There” has become an anthem for women in the labor movement. Her most recent album is It’s Personal (2017). She is currently working on a film documenting her journey as a cultural worker.