American folk singer Pete Seeger has an estimated net worth of $4.2 million. He attended Harvard College on a partial scholarship and became involved with politics and folk music. However, his grades suffered from his activities, so he dropped out of college in 1938.

When actor/folk singer Will Geer organized the All-American Left-Wing Folk-Song Revival Movement, a benefit concert for migrant workers in California in 1939, Seeger met Woody Guthrie and he began touring with him. In 1940, he started the Almanac Singers along with Lee Hays, Pete Haws and Millard Lampbell. During his tours with the pro-union group, the FBI began a file on him.

At the start of World War II, the group broke up. After the war, Seeger started the People’s Song, which was later called Sing Out!. In 1949, he formed a new group The Weavers with Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Ronnie Gilbert. They have a string of hit records, including the most notable recording of Lead Belly’s Goodnight Irene.

Seeger is also a songwriter who is best known as the co-author of Where Have All the Flowers Gone, with Joe Hickerson, If I Had a Hammer (Hammer Song), composed with Hays, and Turn, Turn, Turn! These songs were popularized by several artists and groups during the 1960s.

Seeger was one of the folk singers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual We Shall Overcome. It became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS “American Masters” episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, he states that it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional “We will overcome” to the more pleasant to the ears “We shall overcome”.