We Shall Overcome
Encyclopedia
"We Shall Overcome" is a protest song
that became a key anthem
of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). The title and structure of the song are derived from an early gospel song
by African-American composer Charles Albert Tindley. The song was published in 1947 as "We Will Overcome" in the People's Songs Bulletin (a publication of People's Songs, an organization of which Pete Seeger
was the director and guiding spirit). It appeared in the bulletin as a contribution of and with an introduction by Zilphia Horton
, then music director of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee, an adult education school that trained union organizers. It was her favorite song and she taught to countless others, including Pete Seeger, who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as Frank Hamilton
and Joe Glazer
, who recorded it in 1950.
The song became associated with the Civil Rights movement from 1959, when Guy Carawan
stepped in as song leader at Highlander, which was then focussed on non-violent civil rights activism. It quickly became the movement's unofficial anthem. Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez
, sang the song at rallies, folk festivals, and concerts in the North and helped make it widely known. Since its rise to prominence, the song, and songs based on it, have been used in a variety of protests worldwide.
composition by the Reverend Charles Albert Tindley of Philadelphia that appeared together with seven other songs in a hymnal published in 1901. A noted minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
, Tindley was the author of forty-five influential gospel hymns, of which "We'll Understand It By and By" and "Stand By Me" are among the best known. The published text bore the epigraph, "Ye shall overcome if ye faint not", derived from Galatians
6:9: "And let us not be weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." It read:
The world is one great battlefield
With forces all arrayed.
If in my heart I do not yield,
I'll overcome some day.
Tindley's songs were written in an idiom rooted in African American folk traditions, using pentatonic intervals, with ample space allowed for improvised interpolation, the addition of "blue" thirds and sevenths, and frequently featuring short refrains in which the congregation could join.. Tindley's importance, however, was primarily as a lyricist and poet whose words spoke directly to the the feelings of his audiences, many of whom had been freed from slavery only thirty-six years before he first published his songs, and who were often impoverished, illiterate, and newly arrived in the North. "Even today" wrote musicologist Horace Boyer in 1983, "ministers quote his texts in the midst of their sermons as if they were poems, as indeed they are."
After its first success, the popularity of "I'll Overcome" waned for a time in the gospel world. However, a letter printed on the front page of the February 1909, United Mine Workers Journal states that, " Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome.'" Whether this refers to Tindley's 1902 gospel song cannot be determined, since the lyrics and tune have not come down to us. The mention is significant, however, since this is the first mention of the song's being sung in a secular context and mixed race setting. It is also (if the quotation is accurate) the first instance of the use of the first person plural pronoun "we" of a movement song instead of the singular "I" usual in the gospel and spiritual tradition. It seems reasonable to suppose that this more militant version, or its memory, persisted underground in the labor movement during the 1920s to re-emerge during its revival of the 1930s and 40s.
Outside of the labor movement Tindley's hymn was simplified, and performances began to resemble another folk-based spiritual, "I'll Be All Right", of which many versions exist. Tindley's original refrain, "If in my heart, I do not yield", was simplified to "Deep in my heart, I do believe", and additional improvised verses were added. According to David Wallechinsky
and Irving Wallace
, by 1945 the words and the tune had come together in a song still called by Tindley's title, "I'll Overcome Some Day", with additional words by Atron Twigg and a revised musical arrangement by Chicago composer, arranger, and publisher, Kenneth Morris. Legendary gospel singer, pianist, and composer, Roberta Martin
, also based in Chicago, composed another version of "I'll Overcome", the last 12 bars of which are the same as the current version of 'We Shall Overcome.'" Thus by the end of 1945 several versions of "I Will [I'll] Overcome" were current as a gospel song, while on the South Carolina picket line, Lucille Simmons and other striking tobacco workers we singing a slow version of the song as, "We Will Overcome".
Tindley's "I'll Overcome Someday" thus provides the structure for "We Shall Overcome", with both text and melody having undergone a process of alteration. The tune has been changed so that it now echoes the opening and closing melody of the powerfully resonant nineteenth century, "No More Auction Block For Me", also known from its refrain as, "Many Thousands Gone". This was number 35 in Thomas Wentworth Higginson
's collection of Negro Spirituals that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly of June, 1867, with a comment by Higginson reflecting on how such songs were composed (i.e., whether the work of a single author or through what used to be called "communal composition"):
Coincidentally, Bob Dylan
claims that he used this very same melodic motif from "No More Auction Block" for his composition, "Blowin' in the Wind
." Thus similarities of melodic and rhythmic patterns imparted cultural and emotional resonance ("the same feeling") to three different, and historically very significant songs.
It has also been pointed out that the note progression of the tune has a noticeable family resemblance to the famous lay Catholic hymn "O Sanctissima
" (also known as "The Sicilian Mariner's Hymn") collected (or composed) in Italy by Johann Gottfried Herder
in the late Eighteenth Century. Arguably an even closer resemblance is to Caro Mio Ben attributed to Neapolitan composer Giuseppe Giordani
; this is also a late 18th Century Italian song and was a staple of 19th century voice teachers.
, South Carolina
, members of the Food and Tobacco Workers Union (who were mostly female and African American), began a five-month strike against the American Tobacco Company
. To keep up their spirits during the cold, wet winter of 1945-46, one of the strikers, a woman named Lucille Simmons, led a slow "long meter style" version of the gospel hymn, "We'll Overcome" (I'll Be All Right") to end each day's picketing. Union organizer, Zilphia Horton
, who was the wife of the co-founder of the Highlander Folk School (later Highlander Research and Education Center), learned it from Lucille Simmons. Horton was (1935–56) Highlander's music director, and it became her custom to end group meetings each evening by leading this, her favorite song. During the Presidential Campaign of Henry A. Wallace
, "We Will Overcome" was printed in Bulletin No. 3 (Sept., 1948), 8, of People's Songs with an introduction by Horton saying that she had learned it from the interracial Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO) Food and Tobacco Workers' Union workers and had found it to be extremely powerful. Pete Seeger
, a founding member, and for three years Director of People's Songs, learned it from Horton's version in 1947. Seeger writes: "I changed it to 'We shall'... I think I liked a more open sound; 'We will' has alliteration to it, but 'We shall' opens the mouth wider; the 'i' in 'will' is not an easy vowel to sing well [...]." Seeger also added some verses ("We'll walk hand in hand" and "The whole wide world around").
In 1950, the CIO's Department of Education and Research released the album, Eight New Songs for Labor, sung by Joe Glazer
("Labor's Troubador"), and the Elm City Four (songs on the album were: "I Ain't No Stranger Now," "Too Old to Work," "That's All," "Humblin' Back," "Shine on Me," "Great Day," "The Mill Was Made of Marble," and "We Will Overcome"). During a Southern CIO drive, Glazer taught the song to country singer Texas Bill Strength, who cut a version that was later picked up by 4-Star Records.
The song made its first recorded appearance as "We Shall Overcome" (rather than "We Will Overcome") in 1952 on a disc recorded by Laura Duncan (soloist) and The Jewish Young Singers (chorus) conducted by Robert De Cormier
co-produced by Ernie Lieberman and Irwin Silber
on Hootenany Records (Hoot 104-A) (Folkways, FN 2513, BCD15720), where it is identified as a Negro Spiritual.
Frank Hamilton
, a folk singer from California who was a member of People's Songs and later The Weavers
, picked up Seeger's version. Hamilton's friend and traveling companion, fellow-Californian Guy Carawan
, learned the song from Hamilton. Carawan and Hamilton, accompanied by Ramblin Jack Elliot, visited Highlander in the early fifties and would also have heard Zilphia Horton sing the song there. In 1957, Seeger sang for a Highlander audience that included Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who remarked on the way to his next stop, in Kentucky, how much the song had stuck with him. When, in 1959, Guy Carawan succeeded Horton as music director at Highlander, he reintroduced it at the school. It was the young (many of them teenagers) student-activists at Highlander, however, who gave the song the words and rhythms we know it by today, when they sang it to keep their spirits up during the frightening police raids on Highlander and their subsequent stays in jail in 1959-60. Because of this, Carawan has been reluctant to claim credit for the song's widespread popularity. In the PBS video We Shall Overcome, Julian Bond
credits Carawan with teaching and singing the song at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
in Raleigh, N.C., in 1960. From there, it spread orally and became an anthem of Southern African American labor union and civil rights activism. Seeger also has publicly, in concert, credited Carawan with the primary role in teaching and popularizing the song within the Civil Rights Movement.
, led a crowd of 300,000 in singing "We Shall Overcome" at the Lincoln Memorial during A. Philip Randolph
's March on Washington. President Lyndon Johnson, although himself a Southerner, used the phrase "we shall overcome" in addressing Congress on March 15, 1965, in a speech delivered after the violent, "bloody Sunday" attacks on civil rights demonstrators during the Selma to Montgomery marches
, thus legitimizing the protest movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
recited the words from "We Shall Overcome" in his final sermon delivered on in Memphis on Sunday March 31, 1968, before his assassination. He done so previously in 1965 in a similar sermon delivered before an interfaith congregation at Temple Israel in Hollywood, California:
Farmworkers in the United States later sang the song in Spanish during strikes and grape boycotts of the late 1960s., and it was notably sung by the U.S.
Senator
for New York
Robert F. Kennedy
, when he led anti-apartheid crowds in choruses from the rooftop of his car while touring South Africa in 1966. It was also the song Abie Nathan
chose to play as the Voice of Peace
on October 1, 1993, and as a result it found its way to South Africa
in the later years of the anti-apartheid movement.
The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
adopted "we shall overcome" as a slogan and used it in title of their retrospective autobiography
publication, We Shall Overcome - The History of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland 19 68-1978. The film
Bloody Sunday depicts march leader MP
Ivan Cooper
leading the song shortly before the Bloody Sunday shootings
. In 1997, the Christian men's ministry, Promise Keepers
featured the song on their worship CD for that year - The Making Of A Godly Man featuring (black) worship leader Donn Thomas (along with the Maranatha! Promise Band). Bruce Springsteen
re-interpreted the song, which has been included on Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Tribute to Pete Seeger and his 2006 album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
.
, Mark Allen wrote:
The melody was also used (crediting it to Tindley) in a symphony by American composer William Rowland . In 1999 National Public Radio included "We Shall Overcome" on their NPR 100 list of most important American songs of the 20th century. As a reference to the line, on January 20, 2009, after the inauguration of Barack Obama
as 44th U.S. President
, a man holding the banner, "WE HAVE OVERCOME" was seen near the Capitol, a day after hundreds of people posed with the sign on Martin Luther King Jr. day
As the attempted serial killer "Lasermannen" had shot several immigrants around Stockholm
in 1992, Prime Minister Carl Bildt
and Immigration Minister Birgit Friggebo
attended a meeting in Rinkeby
. As the audience became upset, Friggebo tried to calm them down by proposing everyone to sing "We Shall Overcome." This statement is widely regarded as one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics. In 2008, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
listed the Sveriges Television
recording of the event as the best political clip available on YouTube.
On June 7, 2010, Roger Waters
of Pink Floyd
fame, released a new version of the song as a protest of the Israel
i blockade of Gaza
.
In India
, renowned poet Girija Kumar Mathur composed its literal translation in Hindi "Hum Honge Kaamyab / Ek Din" which became a popular patriotic/spiritual song during the 1980s, particularly in schools.
In Bengali
-speaking India and in Bangladesh
there are two versions, both popular among school-children and political activists. "Amra Karbo Joy" (a literal translation) was translated by the Bengali folk singer Hemanga Biswas
and re-recorded by Bhupen Hazarika
. Another version, translated by Shibdas Bandyopadhyay, "Ek Din Surjyer Bhor" (literally translated as "One Day The Sun Will Rise") was recorded by the Calcutta Youth Choir
arranged by Ruma Guha Thakurta
during the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence and became one of the largest selling Bengali records. It was a favorite of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
and regularly sung at public events after Bangladesh gained independence.
In the Indian State of Kerala
, the traditional Communist stronghold, the song became popular in college campuses in late 1970s. It was the struggle song of the Students Federation of India
SFI, the largest student organisation in the country. The song translated to the regional language Malayalam by N. P. Chandrasekharan, an activist of SFI. The translation followed the same tune of the original song, as "Nammal Vijayikkum". Later it was also published in Student, the monthly of SFI in Malayalam.
"We Shall Overcome" was a prominent song in the 2010 Bollywood film
My Name is Khan
, which compared the struggle of Muslims in modern America
to the struggles of African Americans in the past. The song was sung in both English
and Hindi
in the film, which starred Shahrukh Khan
.
law. "We Shall Overcome" is an adaptation by Zilphia Horton, Guy Carawan, Frank Hamilton, and Pete Seeger, of a song that Zilphia Horton heard sung by union organizer Lucille Simmons in 1945. Horton's heirs, Carawan, Hamilton, and Seeger, share the artists' half of the rights, and TRO (The Richmond Organization, which includes Ludlow Music, Essex, Folkways Music, and Hollis Music), holds the publishers rights (to 50% of the royalty earnings). Pete Seeger explained that he took out a defensive copyright on advice of his publisher, TRO, to prevent someone else from doing so and "At that time we didn't know Lucille Simmons' name." Their royalties go to the "We Shall Overcome" Fund, administered by Highlander under the trusteeship of the "writers" (i.e., the holders of the writers' share of the copyright, who, strictly speaking, are the arrangers and adapters). Such funds are used to give small grants for cultural expression involving African Americans organizing in the U.S. South.
Protest song
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of topical songs . It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre...
that became a key anthem
Anthem
The term anthem means either a specific form of Anglican church music , or more generally, a song of celebration, usually acting as a symbol for a distinct group of people, as in the term "national anthem" or "sports anthem".-Etymology:The word is derived from the Greek via Old English , a word...
of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). The title and structure of the song are derived from an early gospel song
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
by African-American composer Charles Albert Tindley. The song was published in 1947 as "We Will Overcome" in the People's Songs Bulletin (a publication of People's Songs, an organization of which Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
was the director and guiding spirit). It appeared in the bulletin as a contribution of and with an introduction by Zilphia Horton
Zilphia Horton
Zilphia Horton was American musician, community organizer, educator, Civil Rights activist, and folklorist. She is best-known for her work with her husband Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School where she is generally credited with turning such songs as "We Shall Overcome", "Keep Your Eyes on...
, then music director of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee, an adult education school that trained union organizers. It was her favorite song and she taught to countless others, including Pete Seeger, who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as Frank Hamilton
Frank Hamilton
Frank Hamilton may refer to:*Frank Hastings Hamilton , U.S. surgeon*Frank Fletcher Hamilton , Canadian Progressive Conservative MP...
and Joe Glazer
Joe Glazer
Joe Glazer , closely associated with labor unions and often referred to as the "labor's troubadour," was a US-American folk musician who recorded more than thirty albums over the course of his career....
, who recorded it in 1950.
The song became associated with the Civil Rights movement from 1959, when Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan is an American folk musician and musicologist. He serves as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee....
stepped in as song leader at Highlander, which was then focussed on non-violent civil rights activism. It quickly became the movement's unofficial anthem. Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
, sang the song at rallies, folk festivals, and concerts in the North and helped make it widely known. Since its rise to prominence, the song, and songs based on it, have been used in a variety of protests worldwide.
Origins as Gospel, Folk, and Labor Song
"I'll Overcome Someday" was a hymn or gospel musicGospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
composition by the Reverend Charles Albert Tindley of Philadelphia that appeared together with seven other songs in a hymnal published in 1901. A noted minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the A.M.E. Church, is a predominantly African American Methodist denomination based in the United States. It was founded by the Rev. Richard Allen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816 from several black Methodist congregations in the...
, Tindley was the author of forty-five influential gospel hymns, of which "We'll Understand It By and By" and "Stand By Me" are among the best known. The published text bore the epigraph, "Ye shall overcome if ye faint not", derived from Galatians
Epistle to the Galatians
The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, often shortened to Galatians, is the ninth book of the New Testament. It is a letter from Paul of Tarsus to a number of Early Christian communities in the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia...
6:9: "And let us not be weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." It read:
The world is one great battlefield
With forces all arrayed.
If in my heart I do not yield,
I'll overcome some day.
Tindley's songs were written in an idiom rooted in African American folk traditions, using pentatonic intervals, with ample space allowed for improvised interpolation, the addition of "blue" thirds and sevenths, and frequently featuring short refrains in which the congregation could join.. Tindley's importance, however, was primarily as a lyricist and poet whose words spoke directly to the the feelings of his audiences, many of whom had been freed from slavery only thirty-six years before he first published his songs, and who were often impoverished, illiterate, and newly arrived in the North. "Even today" wrote musicologist Horace Boyer in 1983, "ministers quote his texts in the midst of their sermons as if they were poems, as indeed they are."
After its first success, the popularity of "I'll Overcome" waned for a time in the gospel world. However, a letter printed on the front page of the February 1909, United Mine Workers Journal states that, " Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome.'" Whether this refers to Tindley's 1902 gospel song cannot be determined, since the lyrics and tune have not come down to us. The mention is significant, however, since this is the first mention of the song's being sung in a secular context and mixed race setting. It is also (if the quotation is accurate) the first instance of the use of the first person plural pronoun "we" of a movement song instead of the singular "I" usual in the gospel and spiritual tradition. It seems reasonable to suppose that this more militant version, or its memory, persisted underground in the labor movement during the 1920s to re-emerge during its revival of the 1930s and 40s.
Outside of the labor movement Tindley's hymn was simplified, and performances began to resemble another folk-based spiritual, "I'll Be All Right", of which many versions exist. Tindley's original refrain, "If in my heart, I do not yield", was simplified to "Deep in my heart, I do believe", and additional improvised verses were added. According to David Wallechinsky
David Wallechinsky
David Wallechinsky has worked as a commentator for NBC Olympic coverage and is the author of many Olympic reference books and other reference books. He is a Jewish-American. He is the author of The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics and The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics series...
and Irving Wallace
Irving Wallace
Irving Wallace was an American best-selling author and screenwriter. Wallace was known for his heavily researched novels, many with a sexual theme. One critic described him "as the most successful of all the many exponents of junk fiction perhaps because he took it all so seriously, not so say...
, by 1945 the words and the tune had come together in a song still called by Tindley's title, "I'll Overcome Some Day", with additional words by Atron Twigg and a revised musical arrangement by Chicago composer, arranger, and publisher, Kenneth Morris. Legendary gospel singer, pianist, and composer, Roberta Martin
Roberta Martin
Roberta Martin was an American gospel composer, singer, pianist, arranger and choral organizer, helped launch the careers of many other gospel artists through her group, The Roberta Martin Singers.-Early years:...
, also based in Chicago, composed another version of "I'll Overcome", the last 12 bars of which are the same as the current version of 'We Shall Overcome.'" Thus by the end of 1945 several versions of "I Will [I'll] Overcome" were current as a gospel song, while on the South Carolina picket line, Lucille Simmons and other striking tobacco workers we singing a slow version of the song as, "We Will Overcome".
Tindley's "I'll Overcome Someday" thus provides the structure for "We Shall Overcome", with both text and melody having undergone a process of alteration. The tune has been changed so that it now echoes the opening and closing melody of the powerfully resonant nineteenth century, "No More Auction Block For Me", also known from its refrain as, "Many Thousands Gone". This was number 35 in Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism...
's collection of Negro Spirituals that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly of June, 1867, with a comment by Higginson reflecting on how such songs were composed (i.e., whether the work of a single author or through what used to be called "communal composition"):
Even of this last composition, however, we have only the approximate date and know nothing of the mode of composition. Allan RamsayAllan RamsayAllan Ramsay may refer to:*Allan Ramsay , also known as Allan Ramsay the Elder, Scottish poet*Allan Ramsay , also known as Allan Ramsay the Younger, Scottish portrait painter...
says of the Scots Songs, that, no matter who made them, they were soon attributed to the minister of the parish whence they sprang. And I always wondered, about these, whether they had always a conscious and definite origin in some leading mind, or whether they grew by gradual accretion, in an almost unconscious way. On this point I could get no information, though I asked many questions, until at last, one day when I was being rowed across from Beaufort to Ladies' Island, I found myself, with delight, on the actual trail of a song. One of the oarsmen, a brisk young fellow, not a soldier, on being asked for his theory of the matter, dropped out a coy confession. "Some good spirituals," he said, "are start jess out o' curiosity. I been a-raise a sing, myself, once."
My dream was fulfilled, and I had traced out, not the poem alone, but the poet. I implored him to proceed.
"Once we boys," he said, "went for to tote some rice, and de nigger-driver, he keep a-callin' on us; and I say, 'O, de ole nigger-driver!' Den another said, 'First thing my mammy told me was, notin' so bad as a nigger-driver.' Den I made a sing, just puttin' a word, and den another word."
Then he began singing, and the men, after listening a moment, joined in the chorus as if it were an old acquaintance, though they evidently had never heard it before. I saw how easily a new "sing" took root among them.
Coincidentally, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
claims that he used this very same melodic motif from "No More Auction Block" for his composition, "Blowin' in the Wind
Blowin' in the Wind
"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. Although it has been described as a protest song, it poses a series of questions about peace, war and freedom...
." Thus similarities of melodic and rhythmic patterns imparted cultural and emotional resonance ("the same feeling") to three different, and historically very significant songs.
It has also been pointed out that the note progression of the tune has a noticeable family resemblance to the famous lay Catholic hymn "O Sanctissima
O Sanctissima
O Sanctissima is a Roman Catholic hymn in Latin to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is claimed that the tune of the hymn is Sicilian.The tune is sometimes called Sicilian Mariners Hymn or Mariners Hymn.The words of the first verse of the hymn in Latin are:...
" (also known as "The Sicilian Mariner's Hymn") collected (or composed) in Italy by Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
in the late Eighteenth Century. Arguably an even closer resemblance is to Caro Mio Ben attributed to Neapolitan composer Giuseppe Giordani
Giuseppe Giordani
Giuseppe Giordani was an Italian composer, mainly of opera.He was born in Naples, where he studied music with Domenico Cimarosa and Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. In 1774 he was appointed as music director of the chapel of the Duomo of Naples. His first opera was released in 1779...
; this is also a late 18th Century Italian song and was a staple of 19th century voice teachers.
Role of Highlander Folk School
In the fall of 1945 in CharlestonCharleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
, South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, members of the Food and Tobacco Workers Union (who were mostly female and African American), began a five-month strike against the American Tobacco Company
American Tobacco Company
The American Tobacco Company was a tobacco company founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter and Goodwin & Company...
. To keep up their spirits during the cold, wet winter of 1945-46, one of the strikers, a woman named Lucille Simmons, led a slow "long meter style" version of the gospel hymn, "We'll Overcome" (I'll Be All Right") to end each day's picketing. Union organizer, Zilphia Horton
Zilphia Horton
Zilphia Horton was American musician, community organizer, educator, Civil Rights activist, and folklorist. She is best-known for her work with her husband Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School where she is generally credited with turning such songs as "We Shall Overcome", "Keep Your Eyes on...
, who was the wife of the co-founder of the Highlander Folk School (later Highlander Research and Education Center), learned it from Lucille Simmons. Horton was (1935–56) Highlander's music director, and it became her custom to end group meetings each evening by leading this, her favorite song. During the Presidential Campaign of Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
, "We Will Overcome" was printed in Bulletin No. 3 (Sept., 1948), 8, of People's Songs with an introduction by Horton saying that she had learned it from the interracial Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
(CIO) Food and Tobacco Workers' Union workers and had found it to be extremely powerful. Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
, a founding member, and for three years Director of People's Songs, learned it from Horton's version in 1947. Seeger writes: "I changed it to 'We shall'... I think I liked a more open sound; 'We will' has alliteration to it, but 'We shall' opens the mouth wider; the 'i' in 'will' is not an easy vowel to sing well [...]." Seeger also added some verses ("We'll walk hand in hand" and "The whole wide world around").
In 1950, the CIO's Department of Education and Research released the album, Eight New Songs for Labor, sung by Joe Glazer
Joe Glazer
Joe Glazer , closely associated with labor unions and often referred to as the "labor's troubadour," was a US-American folk musician who recorded more than thirty albums over the course of his career....
("Labor's Troubador"), and the Elm City Four (songs on the album were: "I Ain't No Stranger Now," "Too Old to Work," "That's All," "Humblin' Back," "Shine on Me," "Great Day," "The Mill Was Made of Marble," and "We Will Overcome"). During a Southern CIO drive, Glazer taught the song to country singer Texas Bill Strength, who cut a version that was later picked up by 4-Star Records.
The song made its first recorded appearance as "We Shall Overcome" (rather than "We Will Overcome") in 1952 on a disc recorded by Laura Duncan (soloist) and The Jewish Young Singers (chorus) conducted by Robert De Cormier
Robert De Cormier
Robert DeCormier is an American musical conductor, arranger, and director, and a graduate of the Juilliard School. He has arranged music for many singers and groups, including Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul, and Mary, and has worked with Milt Okun. DeCormier is perhaps most famous for his...
co-produced by Ernie Lieberman and Irwin Silber
Irwin Silber
Irwin Silber was an American journalist, editor, publisher, and political activist.-Early years:Irwin Silber was born October 17, 1925 in New York City to ethnic Jewish parents....
on Hootenany Records (Hoot 104-A) (Folkways, FN 2513, BCD15720), where it is identified as a Negro Spiritual.
Frank Hamilton
Frank Hamilton
Frank Hamilton may refer to:*Frank Hastings Hamilton , U.S. surgeon*Frank Fletcher Hamilton , Canadian Progressive Conservative MP...
, a folk singer from California who was a member of People's Songs and later The Weavers
The Weavers
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads, and selling millions of records at the height of their...
, picked up Seeger's version. Hamilton's friend and traveling companion, fellow-Californian Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan is an American folk musician and musicologist. He serves as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee....
, learned the song from Hamilton. Carawan and Hamilton, accompanied by Ramblin Jack Elliot, visited Highlander in the early fifties and would also have heard Zilphia Horton sing the song there. In 1957, Seeger sang for a Highlander audience that included Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who remarked on the way to his next stop, in Kentucky, how much the song had stuck with him. When, in 1959, Guy Carawan succeeded Horton as music director at Highlander, he reintroduced it at the school. It was the young (many of them teenagers) student-activists at Highlander, however, who gave the song the words and rhythms we know it by today, when they sang it to keep their spirits up during the frightening police raids on Highlander and their subsequent stays in jail in 1959-60. Because of this, Carawan has been reluctant to claim credit for the song's widespread popularity. In the PBS video We Shall Overcome, Julian Bond
Julian Bond
Horace Julian Bond , known as Julian Bond, is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
credits Carawan with teaching and singing the song at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
in Raleigh, N.C., in 1960. From there, it spread orally and became an anthem of Southern African American labor union and civil rights activism. Seeger also has publicly, in concert, credited Carawan with the primary role in teaching and popularizing the song within the Civil Rights Movement.
Use in the 1960s Civil Rights and other Protest Movements
In August 1963, 22-year old folksinger Joan BaezJoan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
, led a crowd of 300,000 in singing "We Shall Overcome" at the Lincoln Memorial during A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph was a leader in the African American civil-rights movement and the American labor movement. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly Negro labor union. In the early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the March on Washington...
's March on Washington. President Lyndon Johnson, although himself a Southerner, used the phrase "we shall overcome" in addressing Congress on March 15, 1965, in a speech delivered after the violent, "bloody Sunday" attacks on civil rights demonstrators during the Selma to Montgomery marches
Selma to Montgomery marches
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League...
, thus legitimizing the protest movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
recited the words from "We Shall Overcome" in his final sermon delivered on in Memphis on Sunday March 31, 1968, before his assassination. He done so previously in 1965 in a similar sermon delivered before an interfaith congregation at Temple Israel in Hollywood, California:
We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome. And I believe it because somehow the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right; "no lie can live forever". We shall overcome because William Cullen BryantWilliam Cullen BryantWilliam Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...
is right; "truth crushed to earth will rise again". We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right:.
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the then unknown
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to speed up the day. And in the words of prophecy, every valley shall be exalted. And every mountain and hill shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This will be a great day. This will be a marvelous hour. And at that moment—figuratively speaking in biblical words—the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy
Farmworkers in the United States later sang the song in Spanish during strikes and grape boycotts of the late 1960s., and it was notably sung by the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
for New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
, when he led anti-apartheid crowds in choruses from the rooftop of his car while touring South Africa in 1966. It was also the song Abie Nathan
Abie Nathan
Avraham "Abie" Nathan was an Israeli humanitarian and peace activist, perhaps best known as the founder of the Voice of Peace radio station.-Early years:...
chose to play as the Voice of Peace
Voice of Peace
Voice of Peace was an offshore radio station that served the Middle East for 20 years from the former Dutch cargo vessel MV Peace , anchored off the coast of Tel Aviv...
on October 1, 1993, and as a result it found its way to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
in the later years of the anti-apartheid movement.
The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was an organisation which campaigned for equal civil rights for the all the people in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
adopted "we shall overcome" as a slogan and used it in title of their retrospective autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
publication, We Shall Overcome - The History of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland 19 68-1978. The film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
Bloody Sunday depicts march leader MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Ivan Cooper
Ivan Cooper
Ivan Averill Cooper is a former politician from Northern Ireland who was a Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and founding member of the SDLP...
leading the song shortly before the Bloody Sunday shootings
Bloody Sunday (1972)
Bloody Sunday —sometimes called the Bogside Massacre—was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army...
. In 1997, the Christian men's ministry, Promise Keepers
Promise Keepers
Promise Keepers is an international conservative Christian organization for men. While it originated in the United States, it is now world-wide...
featured the song on their worship CD for that year - The Making Of A Godly Man featuring (black) worship leader Donn Thomas (along with the Maranatha! Promise Band). Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
re-interpreted the song, which has been included on Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Tribute to Pete Seeger and his 2006 album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
-Personnel:* Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, B-3 organ, and percussion* Sam Bardfeld – violin* Art Baron – tuba* Frank Bruno – guitar* Jeremy Chatzky – upright bass* Mark Clifford – banjo...
.
Widespread adaptation
"We Shall Overcome" later was adopted by various anti-Communist movements in the Cold War and post-Cold War. In his memoir about his years teaching English in Czechoslovakia after the Velvet RevolutionVelvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
, Mark Allen wrote:
The melody was also used (crediting it to Tindley) in a symphony by American composer William Rowland . In 1999 National Public Radio included "We Shall Overcome" on their NPR 100 list of most important American songs of the 20th century. As a reference to the line, on January 20, 2009, after the inauguration of Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
as 44th U.S. President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, a man holding the banner, "WE HAVE OVERCOME" was seen near the Capitol, a day after hundreds of people posed with the sign on Martin Luther King Jr. day
As the attempted serial killer "Lasermannen" had shot several immigrants around Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
in 1992, Prime Minister Carl Bildt
Carl Bildt
, Honorary KCMG is a Swedish politician, diplomat and nobleman. Formerly Prime Minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994 and leader of the liberal conservative Moderate Party from 1986 to 1999, Bildt has served as Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs since 6 October 2006...
and Immigration Minister Birgit Friggebo
Birgit Friggebo
Birgit Irma Gunborg Friggebo is a Swedish politician and member of the Liberal People's Party. Born in Falköping, she married economics professor Bo Södersten in 1997....
attended a meeting in Rinkeby
Rinkeby
Rinkeby is a district in Rinkeby-Kista borough, Stockholm, Sweden. Rinkeby had 15,051 inhabitants as at December 31, 2007.Rinkeby is noted for its high concentration of immigrants and people with immigrant ancestry...
. As the audience became upset, Friggebo tried to calm them down by proposing everyone to sing "We Shall Overcome." This statement is widely regarded as one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics. In 2008, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet is a daily newspaper in Sweden. The first issue appeared on 18 December 1884. Svenska Dagbladet is published in Stockholm and provides coverage of national and international news as well as local coverage of the Greater Stockholm region...
listed the Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television AB , Sweden's Television, is a national television broadcaster based in Sweden, funded by a compulsory fee to be paid by all television owners...
recording of the event as the best political clip available on YouTube.
On June 7, 2010, Roger Waters
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
of Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
fame, released a new version of the song as a protest of the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i blockade of Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
.
In India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, renowned poet Girija Kumar Mathur composed its literal translation in Hindi "Hum Honge Kaamyab / Ek Din" which became a popular patriotic/spiritual song during the 1980s, particularly in schools.
In Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
-speaking India and in Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
there are two versions, both popular among school-children and political activists. "Amra Karbo Joy" (a literal translation) was translated by the Bengali folk singer Hemanga Biswas
Hemanga Biswas
Hemanga Biswas was an exponent of the Bhantiali folk music, originally popular among the fishermen of Bangladesh. He was born in 1912.-Songs:Hemanga Biswas wrote and sung some popular songs in Bengali...
and re-recorded by Bhupen Hazarika
Bhupen Hazarika
Bhupen Hazarika was an Indian lyricist, musician, singer, poet and film-maker from Assam. His songs,written and sung mainly in Assamese by the legend himself, are infused with humanity and universalism, and have been translated and sung in many languages, most notable being Bengali ,Hindi and...
. Another version, translated by Shibdas Bandyopadhyay, "Ek Din Surjyer Bhor" (literally translated as "One Day The Sun Will Rise") was recorded by the Calcutta Youth Choir
Calcutta Youth Choir
Calcutta Youth Choir was set up in 1958 by Ruma Guha Thakurta with Salil Chowdhury and Satyajit Ray.Calcutta Youth Choir is known for their performance of folk and mass songs. Several years ago, the choir broke out with the song 'Aaj joto juddhabaaj'. Shibdas Bandopadhyay wrote the words and V....
arranged by Ruma Guha Thakurta
Ruma Guha Thakurta
-Early life:She was born in 1934 as Ruma Ghosh. She hails from a Brahmo Bengali family. Her father was Satyen Ghosh and her mother was Sati Devi, a singer. Sati Devi's younger sister Bijoya married film director Satyajit Ray. Thakurta had her formal education in many places including Santiniketan...
during the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence and became one of the largest selling Bengali records. It was a favorite of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a Bengali nationalist politician and the founder of Bangladesh. He headed the Awami League, served as the first President of Bangladesh and later became its Prime Minister. He headed the Awami League, served as the first President of Bangladesh and later became its...
and regularly sung at public events after Bangladesh gained independence.
In the Indian State of Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, the traditional Communist stronghold, the song became popular in college campuses in late 1970s. It was the struggle song of the Students Federation of India
Students Federation of India
Students Federation of India is one of the major student organisations in India. SFI is politically linked to the Communist Party of India . Founded in 1970, it claimed a membership strength of nearly 4.2 million school and university students as of 2010.SFI is currently led at the All India level...
SFI, the largest student organisation in the country. The song translated to the regional language Malayalam by N. P. Chandrasekharan, an activist of SFI. The translation followed the same tune of the original song, as "Nammal Vijayikkum". Later it was also published in Student, the monthly of SFI in Malayalam.
"We Shall Overcome" was a prominent song in the 2010 Bollywood film
Bollywood films of 2010
A list of films produced by the Bollywood film industry in 2010. Six films made it to the top 30 list of highest grossing Hindi films at the Indian box office. The total net amount earned by the top ten films of the year was 735.07 crore , compared to 2009's 658 crores, a percentage increase of...
My Name is Khan
My Name is Khan
My Name Is Khan ; commonly referred to as MNIK, is a 2010 Bollywood film directed by Karan Johar, with a screenplay by Shibani Bathija, produced by Hiroo Yash Johar and Gauri Khan, and starring Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, who reunite after nine years...
, which compared the struggle of Muslims in modern America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to the struggles of African Americans in the past. The song was sung in both English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
in the film, which starred Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan , often credited as Shah Rukh Khan, is an Indian film actor, as well as a film producer and television host. Often referred to as "the King of Bollywood", Khan has acted in over 70 Hindi films....
.
Copyright and royalties
"I'll Overcome Someday" written by Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is the likely source of "We Shall Overcome," although the title, words, and tune differ substantially . Even had the two been more similar, Tindley's hymn was published in 1901, and in the public domain, according to US CopyrightCopyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
law. "We Shall Overcome" is an adaptation by Zilphia Horton, Guy Carawan, Frank Hamilton, and Pete Seeger, of a song that Zilphia Horton heard sung by union organizer Lucille Simmons in 1945. Horton's heirs, Carawan, Hamilton, and Seeger, share the artists' half of the rights, and TRO (The Richmond Organization, which includes Ludlow Music, Essex, Folkways Music, and Hollis Music), holds the publishers rights (to 50% of the royalty earnings). Pete Seeger explained that he took out a defensive copyright on advice of his publisher, TRO, to prevent someone else from doing so and "At that time we didn't know Lucille Simmons' name." Their royalties go to the "We Shall Overcome" Fund, administered by Highlander under the trusteeship of the "writers" (i.e., the holders of the writers' share of the copyright, who, strictly speaking, are the arrangers and adapters). Such funds are used to give small grants for cultural expression involving African Americans organizing in the U.S. South.
See also
- American Civil Rights Movement Timeline
- We Shall Overcome: The Seeger SessionsWe Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions-Personnel:* Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, B-3 organ, and percussion* Sam Bardfeld – violin* Art Baron – tuba* Frank Bruno – guitar* Jeremy Chatzky – upright bass* Mark Clifford – banjo...
- Guy CarawanGuy CarawanGuy Carawan is an American folk musician and musicologist. He serves as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee....
- Pete SeegerPete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
Further reading
- Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs: Compiled and edited by Guy and Candie Carawan; foreword by Julian Bond (New South Books, 2007), comprising two classic collections of freedom songs: We Shall Overcome (1963) and Freedom Is A Constant Struggle (1968), reprinted in a single edition. The book includes a major new introduction by Guy and Candie Carawan, words and music to the songs, important documentary photographs, and firsthand accounts by participants in the Civil Rights Movement. Available from Highlander Center.
- We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement: Julius Lester, editorial assistant. Ethel Raim, music editor: Additional musical transcriptions: Joseph Byrd [and] Guy Carawan. New York: Oak Publications, 1963.
- Freedom is a Constant Struggle, compiled and edited by Guy and Candie Carawan. Oak Publications, 1968.
- Alexander Tsesis, We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law. Yale University Press, 2008.
- We Shall Overcome: A Song that Changed the World, by Stuart Stotts, illustrated by Terrance Cummings, foreword by Pete Seeger. New York: Clarion Books, 2010.
- Sing for Freedom, Folkways Records, produced by Guy and Candie Carawan, and the Highlander Center. Field recordings from 1960–88, with the Freedom Singers, Birmingham Movement Choir, Georgia Sea Island Singers, Doc Reese, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Len Chandler, and many others. Smithsonian-Folkways CD version 1990.
- We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert, June 8, 1963, Historic Live recording June 8, 1963. 2-disc set, includes the full concert, starring Pete Seeger, with the Freedom Singers, Columbia # 45312, 1989. Re-released 1997 by Sony as a box CD set.
- Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966 [BOX CD SET] With the Freedom Singers, Fanny Lou Hammer, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, Smithsonian-Folkways CD ASIN: B000001DJT (1997).
External links
- Lyrics
- Charles Tindley page on Taylor House Museum. This page also reproduces the "We Shall Overcome" entry from Wallace and Wallechinsky's People's Almanac.
- Authorized Profile of Guy Carawan with history of the song, "We Shall Overcome" from the Association of Cultural Equity
- in the Air: Albany Georgia. 1961-62. SNCC #101. Recorded by Guy Carawan, produced for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee by Guy Carawan and Alan Lomax. "Freedom In the Air ... is a record of the 1961 protest in Albany, Georgia, when, two weeks before Christmas, 737 people brought the town nearly to a halt to force its integration. The record's never been reissued and that's a shame, as it's a moving document of a community through its protest songs, church services, and experiences in the thick of the civil rights struggle."—Nathan Salsburg, host, Root Hog or Die, East Village Radio, January 2007.
- Susanne´s Folksong-Notizen, excerpts from various articles, liner notes, etc. about "We Shall Overcome".
- Musical Transcription of "We Shall Overcome," based on a recording of Pete Seeger's version, sung with the SNCC Freedom Singers on the 1963 live Carnegie Hall recording, and the 1988 version by Pete Seeger sung at a reunion concert with Pete and the Freedom Singers on the anthology, Sing for Freedom, recorded in the field 1960-88 and edited and annotated by Guy and Candie Carawan, released in 1990 as Smithsonian-Folkways CD SF 40032.
- NPR news article including full streaming versions of Pete Seeger's classic 1963 live Carnegie Hall recording and Bruce Springsteen's tribute version.
- "Pete Seeger & the story of 'We Shall Overcome'" from 1968 interview on the Pop Chronicles.
- "Something About That Song Haunts You", essay on the history of "We Shall Overcome," Complicated Fun, June 9, 2006.
- "Howie Richmond Views Craft Of Song: Publishing Giant Celebrates 50 Years As TRO Founder", by Irv Lichtman, Billboard, 8, 28, 1999. Excerpt: "Key folk songs in the [TRO] catalog, as arranged by a number of folklorists, are 'We Shall Overcome,' 'Kisses Sweeter Than Wine' 'On Top Of Old Smokey,' 'So Long, It's Been Good To Know You,' 'Goodnight Irene,' 'If I Had A Hammer,' 'Tom Dooley,' and 'Rock Island Line.'"
- We Shall Overcome Book", Site for Stotts book (see below) with related links and teacher guides.