We Shall Overcome
From wikipedia
"We Shall Overcome" is a protest song that became a key anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.
The song "We Will Overcome" was published in the September 1948 issue of 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. In it, she claims no ownership of the song and in fact wrote that she had learned the song from members of the CIO Food and Tobacco Workers Union: "It was first sung in Charleston, S.C. ... Its strong emotional appeal and simple dignity never fails to hit people. It sort of stops them cold silent."[1] It was her favorite song and she taught it to countless others, including Pete Seeger,[2] who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as Frank Hamilton and Joe Glazer, who recorded it in 1950.
According to the late Pete Seeger, the song is thought to have become associated with the Civil Rights Movement from 1959, when Guy Carawan stepped in as song leader at Highlander, which was then focused on nonviolent civil rights activism. Seeger states the song quickly became the movement's unofficial anthem. Pete 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.
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