Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar.
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land." Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg and Tom Paxton have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence.
Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour." Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.
Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 — November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer, and director, who is considered "the most important female director the American film industry has known", and "one of the most important and important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films". Film historian Anthony Slide asserts that: "Along with D.W. Griffith, Lois Weber was the American cinema’s first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies."
Weber produced an oeuvre comparable to Griffith in both quantity and quality, and brought to the screen her concerns for humanity and social justice in an estimated 200 to 400 films, of which as few as twenty have been preserved, and has been credited with directing 135 films, writing 114 films, and acting in 100 films. Weber was "one of the first directors to come to the attention of the censors in Hollywood's early years".
Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was a militant women's suffrage activist. On 4 June 1913, after a series of actions that were either self-destructive or violent[citation needed], she stepped in front of the King's horse running in the Epsom Derby, sustaining injuries that resulted in her death four days later. It is still not known if she was attempting suicide or if she was just attempting to disturb the Derby.
Davison was born in Blackheath, London, the daughter of Charles Davison (of Morpeth, Northumberland) and Margaret Davison (of Longhorsley, Northumberland). She had two sisters, a brother and many half-siblings (from her father's first, second and third marriages) including a half-brother, retired naval captain Henry Jocelyn Davison, who gave evidence at her inquest.
She later attended Kensington High School and won a bursary to Royal Holloway College in 1891 to study literature.. Subsequently she was forced to drop out when her father died and her recently widowed mother could not afford the fees of £20 a term. She then took up employment as a private governess after which she became a school teacher in Edgbaston and Worthing, raising enough money to study Biology, Chemistry, English Language and Literature at St Hugh's College, Oxford. She obtained first-class honours in her final exams, though women were not at that time admitted to degrees at Oxford. She also obtained a first class honours degree from London University. Davison obtained a post teaching the daughters of the Moorhouse family in Spratton, Northamptonshire and in 1906 joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU brought together those who felt strongly that militant, confrontational tactics were needed in order to achieve women's suffrage. In 1908, Davison left her teaching post to dedicate herself completely to the movement.