Pete Seeger We Shall Overcome Analysis

The evolution of popular music themes in the black freedom struggle parallel the evolution of the movement itself.

There is no American social movement of the 20th century more closely connected to music than the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. The movement was a national effort made by African Americans and their supporters to eliminate racial segregation and secure citizenship rights specified in the constitution. African Americans wanted and were fighting to have the same rights as white people. They wanted to be able to eat in the same places, use the same buses, use the same restrooms, use the same water fountains, and have the opportunity to vote without taxes and reading tests. Civil rights activists used nonviolent protests

It was one of the most powerful pieces of the 20th century as it quickly became a key anthem of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. The song is most commonly attributed as having descended lyrically from "I'll Overcome Someday", a 19th-century African-American Gospel song by Charles Albert Tindley. The modern version of the song was first said to have been a protest song sung by tobacco workers led by Lucille Simmons in 1945. They then performed it to the Highlander Folk School during the labor struggles of the 1940s. It turn, the song was introduced to white folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger and Highlander’s musical director, Guy Carawan, where they then added various lines to create a version focusing on nonviolent civil rights activism. By the 1950s, the song had been discovered by the young activists of the African American civil rights movement when it quickly became a ubiquitous sing-along anthem that crowds of activists embraced, often swaying side to side, arm in arm. Since its rise to prominence, the song, and songs based on it, have been used in a variety of protests worldwide. 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. Verses were also sung on protest marches and in sit-ins, through clouds of tear gas, and under rows of police batons. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. even recited the words from "We Shall Overcome" in his final sermon delivered in Memphis on Sunday, March 31, 1968, before his assassination. Days later, "We Shall Overcome" was sung by over fifty thousand attendees at Dr. King’s