Sarah Ogan Gunning was a ballad singer, composer, and labor rights activist who lived in Kentucky then migrated north, eventually settling in Detroit, Michigan.  Folklorist Ellen Stekert of Wayne State University interviewed Gunning many times and recorded many of the songs she learned from her family and songs she composed, some only heard in this collection. Stekert also often invited Gunning to speak at her folklore classes at the university. 

This collection consists of Ellen Stekert's fieldwork and class recordings with Sarah Ogan Gunning during the 1960s-1970s, and is comprised of 27 reels.