In 1912, his father, Charles Seeger, was hired to establish the music department at the University of California, Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken pacifism during World War I. Peter Seeger (on father's lap) with his father and mother, Charles and Constance Seeger and brothers on a camping trip (May 23, 1921) Pete's mother, Constance de Clyver Seeger (née Edson), raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the Juilliard School. Charles established the first musicology curriculum in the United States at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1913 helped found the American Musicological Society and was a key founder of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology. Seeger's father, the Harvard-trained composer and musicologist Charles Louis Seeger Jr., was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to American parents.

A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from Württemberg, Germany, had emigrated to America during the American Revolution and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s. His family, which Seeger called 'enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition', traced its genealogy back over 200 years. Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, at the French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan. In the PBS American Masters episode ' Pete Seeger: The Power of Song', Seeger said it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional 'We will overcome' to the more singable 'We shall overcome'. Seeger was one of the folk singers responsible for popularizing the spiritual ' We Shall Overcome' (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists), which became the acknowledged anthem of the 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. 'If I Had a Hammer' was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963) while the Byrds had a number one hit with 'Turn! Turn! Turn!' in 1965.

'Flowers' was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio (1962) Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962) and Johnny Rivers (1965). In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes.Ī prolific songwriter, his best-known songs include ' Where Have All the Flowers Gone?' (with additional lyrics by Joe Hickerson), ' If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)' (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), ' Kisses Sweeter Than Wine' (also with Hays), and ' Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season), which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably its recording of Lead Belly's ' Goodnight, Irene', which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist.

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