Jeanne M. Rasmussen was born in Lubbock, Texas on April 4, 1934. She earned a B.A. in English from Baylor University in 1953, and in August of that year she married George McGranahan, a cardiologist. The couple subsequently had three children: Jay, Georgia, and Gavin.

In the early 1960s, Jeanne met and married Donald Rasmussen, a pulmonary specialist who devoted much of his practice to black lung disease. From Salt Lake City, Utah, the couple moved to Beckley, West Virginia, where Donald practiced medicine. After being introduced to diseases which afflicted miners, Jeanne became interested in miners' lives and began to photograph miners and their families, as well as coal camps and mining disasters.

In West Virginia, Jeanne worked as a journalist for the Raleigh Register, and for WOAY-TV. She became acquainted with Joseph A. "Jock" Yablonski, a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) activist, who in 1969 asked her to be the treasurer for his campaign to unseat incumbent UMWA president Tony Boyle. Yablonski lost the election and was preparing to contest the results when he and his wife and daughter were murdered on December 31, 1969 by assassins acting under Boyle's instructions. After the murders, the Rasmussens were told of dangers to their lives, and coal miners guarded their home. Both Jeanne and Donald later testified at the 1974 murder trial of Tony Boyle.

As Jeanne's interest in and knowledge of coal mining developed, she devoted her skills to publicizing health and safety issues, shoddy treatment by coal operators, and corruption in the UMWA. Her essays appeared in such publications as Mountain Life and Work, Miner's Voice, and the Charleston Gazette, while her photographs appeared in regional newspapers and in such national publications as Harper's, Newsweek, the Washington Post and Mountain Life and Work. In 1974 Rasmussen moved to Reston, Virginia, where she resided until her death on January 30, 1992.

In 1989, Rasmussen donated the Jeanne M. Rasmussen Collection to the Archives of Appalachia. The collection includes almost two hundred photographs--from which the images on display here were selected-- as well as manuscripts and papers.