singers like Bessie Smith and Sippie Wallace as a child, she also learned the accordion, the instrument her father played. She was baptized at age seven and she began preaching at 17. A few years later, Molton became a member of the Holiness Church and started a ministry out of her home. Supporting two children, Molton found that she could not make enough money by preaching. In 1937, looking for work, she moved to Washington, D.C., where her brother, Robert Rollins, had begun pastoring the Florida Avenue Baptist Church. Molton soon took up the guitar, and she began singing on the streets in 1942. Music Playing her guitar, singing, and tapping a tambourine with her foot, Molton occupied the corner of F Street NW and 7th Street NW. She attached a plastic pail to her guitar where passers-by left money. She later incorporated a mount for a harmonica, a microphone and a portable amplifier. Molton sometimes attracted the attention of law enforcement, who did not want her performing on the street, but the police stopped bothering her in the mid-1960s. In 1969, when her usual location was affected by construction for the Washington Metro, Molton moved to the corner of 11th Street NW and F Street NW near the Woodward & Lothrop department store. Molton sang the blues in her early years on the streets. "I was so young, in a wilder, different life then," she said in 1985. Later, she said she no longer performed the blues, describing her music as a mixture of gospel songs and what she called "truth" music, which dealt with the struggles of daily life. Music scholar Bernice Johnson Reagon said that a blues sound was still apparent in her music in the mid-1970s; she said that, unlike most gospel music, a hymnal structure was absent from Molton's songs. Molton's main concerns were not about structure, but about singing lyrics she viewed as sacred rather than secular. Molton wrote an anti-war piece, "Sun's Gonna Shine in Vietnam Someday", which was later renamed "Sun's Gonna Shine Some Day". Over the years, various musicians accompanied Molton, and these collaborations were sometimes carried out under the name of Flora Molton and the Truth Band. Members of the Truth Band included Phil Wiggins, a blues singer later known as part of Cephas & Wiggins. Molton played slide guitar in open D tuning. Her guitar technique was described as