Website: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jscamal/civilrights/folkSamples.htm
We Shall Overcome: Gospel and Protest Songs
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A City Called Heaven (Trad.-arr. C. Kennedy) Cleo Kennedy. Recorded in
Birmingham. AL, 1963. Courtesy Guy Carawan. From Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement:
Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084, 1997.
Go Tell It On The Mountain (Trad.-arr. F. L. Hamer) Led by Fannie Lou Hamer.
Recorded in Greenwood, MS, faIl1963. Courtesy Moses Moon. From Voices Of The Civil
Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084, 1997.
If You Miss Me From The Back Of the Bus (Trad.-arranged B. M. Fikes) Led by
Betty Mae Fikes. Recorded in Selma, AL, October 1963. Courtesy Moses Moon. From Voices
Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF
40084, 1997.
Get your Rights, Jack (C. Mayfield-J. McKissick) CORE Freedom Singers.
Recorded in New York, summer 1963. Courtesy Joycelyn McKissick. From Voices Of The
Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084,
1997.
Calypso Freedom (Trad,-arr, W. Peacock) Led by Willie Peacock. Recorded in
Jackson, MS, fall-winter 1963. Courtesy Moses Moon. From Voices Of The Civil Rights
Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084, 1997.
We Shall Overcome (Trad.) Mass meeting participants. Recorded in Hattiesburg,
MS, February 1964. Courtesy Moses Moon. From Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement:
Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084, 1997.
Governor Wallace (J. Orange-arr. Freedom Singers) SNCC Freedom Singers led by
Charles Neblett. Recorded in Schenectady, NY, 1965. Courtesy Estate of Herbert Poller.
From Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian
Folkways SF 40084, 1997.
Ballad Of Medgar Evers (M. Jones) SNCC Freedom Singers led by Matthew Jones.
Recorded in Atlanta, GA, spring 1964. Courtesy Phonogram. Inc. From Voices Of The Civil
Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084, 1997.
In The Mississippi River (M. Jones) SNCC Freedom Singers led by Marshall Jones.
Recorded in Schenectady, NY, 1965. Courtesy Estate of Herbert Poller. From Voices Of The
Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs. Smithsonian Folkways SF 40084,
1997.
Website: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jscamal/civilrights/BlackFolk.htm
We Shall Overcome: Gospel and Protest Songs
Mixing the spiritual with the political
As Craig Werner points out in his book A Change Is Gonna Come, African-American church songs
have had a double meaning ever since the days of slavery. "When slaves stood barefoot in a white
church and sang to their masters that 'everybody talkin' 'bout heaven ain't going there' , the singers
knew whose destination was in question" (6-7). The lyrics of church hymns were understood to have
both a spiritual and a political meaning. For example, "A City Called Heaven" can be taken at face
value for its spiritual message. It can also suggest either a Northern city or, more abstractly, any place
free of segregation (Werner pp. 6-7). Additionally, it is hard to ignore the obvious parallel between the
biblical story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt towards the Promised Land, and the personal
stories of African-Americans faced with slavery or segregation. While the spiritual message remained
unchanged, the political message evolved. The Jews exodus to Israel could be seen by AfricanAmerican slaves as the story of the Underground Railroad or their difficult and dangerous escape
towards free Northern states. As Werner points out, the "River Jordan" can very well be the Ohio
River, while "Wade in the Water" "provided literal escape instructions for slaves pursued by
bloodhounds" (7). For 20th century African-Americans, the same songs could be seen as a description
of the migration towards Northern cities for better economic opportunities in the 1920s and '30s or
greater civil equality and improved personal security at the height of the Civil Rights Era.
Protest Songs
In this context, it is easy to understand that many spirituals were used as "Freedom Songs" by
protesters who sang them "as is" or wrote new lyrics to further emphasize their political message. The
role of those songs cannot be overstated. They tied separate groups of protesters into a unified
movement with a commonality of purpose and language. They gave courage and strength in the face
of danger. They gave a voice to every black community living under the oppression of segregation.
Through these songs, they were able to express their pain and frustration as well as their hopes and
demands. SNCC activist member Cordell Reagan, one of the leaders of the Albany Movement,
explained it this way: "Without these songs, you know we wouldn't be anywhere. We'd still be down on
Mr. Charley's plantation, chopping cotton for 30 cents a day" ("Without These songs", 74). Bernice
Johnson-Reagan gave this personal account of the power of singing: "In Dawson, Georgia, county
seat of "Terrible Terrell," where Blacks were seventy-five percent of the population, I sat in church and
felt the chill that ran through a small gathering of Blacks when the sheriff and his deputies walked in.
They stood at the door, making sure everyone knew they were there. Then a song began. And the
song made sure that the sheriff and his deputies knew we were there. We became visible; our image
was enlarged as the sounds of the freedom songs filled all the space in that church" (2). From the
Freedom Riders rocking the Hind's County Jail in Mississippi (Farmer qtd. in Wexler, 134) to protesters
singing out while being hauled away in patty wagon in Birmingham (Demming qtd. in Wexler, 173),
examples abound of the power of protest songs.
There are several reasons why gospel provided such a strong and universal basis for protest songs.
First of all, as discussed earlier, gospel had traditionally been a political music as much as a spiritual
one. Second, as LeRoi Jones explained in Blues People, the church had been for years at the center
of black communities. More than anything, gospel songs and hymns, and their performance practices
based on call and responses, were a common cultural thread for black communities across the
country. This meant that not only most civil rights protesters already knew this repertoire but also that
knew songs based on familiar melodies could be learned very quickly. This process is demonstrated
by the numerous examples of protest songs based on traditional gospel songs, with new lyrics written
especially for particular situations. For example, the spiritual "Moses" saw its lyrics changed to "Go
down, Kennedy,/ Way down in Georgia land/ Tell old Pritchett/ To let my people go" during the Albany
Movement (Wexler, 154). When she lead the congregation in singing "Go Tell It on The Mountain" in
Greenwood, MS in 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer took a song which normally celebrated the birth of Christ
and, while retaining the traditional verse, interjected new lyrics to reframe the song in a more relevant
political context (Reagon, 21). The practice of call and responses made this very easy. The song
leader can vary the call of a well known song and the congregation can respond with the traditional
verse. Another great example of this can be heard when, in Selma, AL in 1963, Betty Mae Fykes
introduced the line "If you miss Governor Wallace" in the song "If You Miss Me From The Back Of The
Bus". The congregation, who had been singing along with her, responded "Yeah!" with renewed
energy. Fykes then continued with the traditional line "You can't find him nowhere" and transformed
the end of the verse to "Just come on over to the crazy house/ He'll be restin' over there". It is
interesting to note that the congregation did not follow along all of Fykes variations during this
performance but instead continued singing the usual lyrics.
However, protest songs were not limited to spirituals. Pop music and R&B served as model for many
songs as well. Ray Charles "Hit The Road, Jack" became "Get Your Rights, Jack" while the 1957 hit
"The Banana Boat Song" was turned into "Calypso Freedom" with lyrics about the Freedom Riders.In
addition, a number of original songs (new lyrics, new melody) were composed during the Civil Rights
Movement which would then be taught to protesters around the country. Three methods were used to
this effect. First, organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC,
pronounced "snick") published books of protest songs. Then the same organizations formed singing
groups such as the SNCC and CORE Freedom Singers. Those groups would then travel to various
cities around the country as well as record their music, assuring its rapid dissemination. Finally in
1964, in Atlanta, was held the "Sing for Freedom Conference" so that songwriters could exchange
music and ideas.
Finally, the Civil Rights Movement borrowed protest songs from other older social actions. The most
famous of those and the unofficial anthem of the Movement, "We Shall Overcome", has a complicated
history. According to the PBS website Strange Fruit, it originated as a spiritual by Charles Tindley. It
was first used as a protest songs by striking members of the Negro Food and Tobacco Unions in North
Carolina. The song then spread to various union halls before becoming widely used as the rallying cry
of civil rights activists.
Not every protest songs was meant to be sung by large groups. Some of the best compositions of the
era were written and performed solely by organized and rehearsed ensembles. "Governor Wallace",
named after the governor of Alabama, was written by James Orange and sung by the SNCC Freedom
Singers in a doo-wop style. It later became popular during the Selma to Montgomery March (Reagan,
32). The SNCC Freedom Singers were also responsible for two of the most moving songs about the
struggle for equality. The first, "The Ballad of Medgar Evers" was written by Matthew Jones after the
murder of the Civil Rights leader. It was "arranged to be performed by an ensemble or by him as a solo
singer" and it "was structured so that the chorus was opened to congregational singing" (Reagan, 32).
Here it is heard performed by the SNCC Freedom Singers at the 1965 Atlanta SNCC conference
(ibid.). The second is even more powerful. After three civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi
during the summer of 1964, the White House sent a team of FBI agents to search for the missing men.
The process included dragging the rivers surrounding Philadelphia, MS where the men had
disappeared. The search effort led to the gruesome recovery of several other bodies, thrown in the
water after being lynched or murdered. Those events were the inspiration for the song "In The
Mississippi River" by Marshall Jones , who then led the SNCC Freedom Singers in this performance.
As Bernice Johnson-Reagan rightly points out, this is an "excellent example of the sophistication of
songwriting and arrangement achieved by the second group of SNCC Freedom Singers" (31).
Important Personalities
Mahalia Jackson was probably the best-known Gospel singer
associated with the Civil Rights movement, even if she was not the most active. Born in New orleans,
LA in 1911, she moved to Chicago when she was 16. It was there that she started her singing career
by joining the Greater Salem Baptist Church choir (Encyclopedia Britannica). She met Martin Luther
King and Ralph Abernathy at the Denver National Baptist Convention in 1955, at the beginning of the
Montgomery bus boycott (Werner, 5). She also performed at one of the rallies in Montgomery (Werner,
5). Most famously, she performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on
Washington and, according to various sources, it was her who suggested to King to abandon his
planned speech and to "tell them about your dream" (Wexler, 182).
Less known as a singer than Mahalia Jackson, Fannie Lou Hamer was a much more important
political figure. Born in Ruleville, MS in 1917 in a family of sharecroppers, she became involved in the
Civil Rights movement in August 1962 when she became a SNCC volunteer working for voters
registration in her native state. Her involvement caused her to lose her job then be arrested and
beaten by local police. Undeterred, she became field secretary of the Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee in 1963 (Encyclopedia Britannica). "In 1964, she helped organized the Mississippi Freedom
Summer Project, which included a massive voter registration drive sponsored by SNCC and other civil
rights organizations" (Wexler, 313). That same year, she helped mount a challenge to the all-white
Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention by founding the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party (MFDP) (Wexler, 313). During the convention, her emotional testimony in front of the
credential's committee, which was televised across the country, helped her gain national recognition,
even if it failed to secure seating for the MFDP. Hamer would nevertheless become a Mississippi
delegate at the 1968 Democratic Convention where she received a standing ovation (Wexler, 313).
Hamer was not the only song leader to come out of a grass root Movement
organization. All around the South, local campaigns saw the emergence of strong song leaders around
which singing groups were sometimes organized (Reagan, 26). As mentioned earlier, two of the better
known groups grew out of SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The original SNCC
Freedom Singers were organized during the Albany Movement in Georgia in late 1961 around Cordell
Reagan. Reagan was then SNCC Albany field secretary as well as a good tenor. The quartet he put
together featured soprano Rutha Harris, alto Bernice Johnson and baritone Charles Neblett. The group
was occasionally augmented by baritone Chico Neblett and soprano Bertha Gober (Reagan, 27-28).
"All members functioned as soloists and songleaders, with Reagon carrying the bulk of the
commentary in performances. The group developed a tight quartet sound and a repertoire based on
the full range of freedom songs: songs from mass meetings as well as those created from popular,
secular melodies" (Reagon, 28). The second group of SNCC Freedom Singers emerged in 1964. It
featured Reagon and Charles Neblett as well as James Peacock, Matthew Jones and Marshall Jones
(Reagon, 27). "When Reagon and peacock left to form the Freedom Voices, they added Bill Harris [...]
as the third voice; Emory Harris joined the Freedom Singers; Betty Mae Fikes also sang briefly with
that group. This second group of Freedom Singers made a more contemporary musical statement;
their repertoire supplemented the standard body of freedom songs with material from the folk revival or
topical song movement. Matthew Jones, song writer and jazz musician, also wrote many new songs
for the group. They used guitar accompaniment [...] on most of their selections" (Reagon, 27).
The CORE Freedom Singers grew out of the Freedom Rides of 1961 and other activities sponsored by
that organization. Along with the SNCC Freedom Singers and other Movement vocal ensembles, the
CORE Freedom Singers served several goals. As discussed earlier, they contributed to the spread of
freedom songs around the country but also, through their tours, helped bring the attention back on
grass roots efforts that their organizations were sponsoring even as the media tended to focus more
on better-known leaders and massive demonstrations (Reagon, 26).
Another important musical personality during the Civil Rights Movement was guitaristsinger-songwriter Jimmy Collier. Originally from Arkansas, he was a member of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He joined up with James Orange to
form a performing group during the events in Selma, AL in 1965 (Reagon, 32). In 1966,
he was involved with the SCLC Chicago campaign and teamed with Rev. Frederick
Douglas Kirkpatrick during the Poor People's Campaign in 1968 (Reagon, 26).
Website: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jscamal/civilrights/folkSamples.htm
White Folk Musicians: Protest Songs and Issues of Legitimacy
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Only A Pawn In Their Game and Blowin in the Wind from Bob Dylan: The Time
They Are A-Changin' (Columbia 8905). Recorded 1964. Personnel: Bob Dylan-vocal,
harmonica and guitar.
White Folk Musicians: Protest Songs and Issues of Legitimacy
Three Personalities, Two Attitudes
Just as the Movement drew support from black and white folks alike, a number of white musicians
contributed musically to its development. Because the period 1954-1965 coincided with the Folk
revival in America, because of the grass-root nature of most of the Movement activities and because
most protest songs were based on folk songs, many white folk musicians rallied to the cause.
However, as Craig Werner points out repeatedly in his book, white folks musicians faced a very
peculiar problem when performing black folk music: authenticity. This page presents two different
approaches to this issue through the work of three different musicians: Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and
Bob Dylan.
Pete Seeger and Joan Baez
Although they belonged to two different generations, Pete Seeger's and Joan Baez's involvement with
the Freedom Movement suffered from the same challenges and limitations.
Pete Seeger founded The Weavers in 1948, as a way to protest the growing xenophobia and
parochialism in the United States following World War II. The group performed folk songs from around
the world-including acoustic blues-in an effort to symbolize an ideal of brotherhood. The Weavers saw
music as "a particularly potent and attractive vehicle for the unification and empowerment of the
world's oppressed peoples" (Cowdery, 328). However, Werner writes, the songs lost much of their
meaning when performed by white musicians outside of their original social context. Cowdery expands
on this notion: "Despite their best intentions and subsequent persecution, in retrospect one might ask
whether the result of the Weaver's effort was real social redress or just the commercial co modification
of other people's songs, involving the inevitable dilution of meaning caused by replacing the cultural
context in which the song arose with a sanitized, mass mediated one" (328).
In many ways, Joan Baez performing style further emphasized this
point. Her pure voice, combined with the color of her skin, created a complete disconnect with the
social significance of songs such as "We Are Crossing The River Jordan" or "We Shall Overcome"
which became part of her repertoire. Werner explains that the Folk revival movement, as represented
by Baez, Seeger or the group Peter, Paul and Mary, tended to create images of nostalgia, comfort and
ultimately passivity (53-54) which clashed with the call to action and resolve of African-American song
leaders.
The issue is not whether artists such as Seeger and Baez were sincere in their efforts or not. Both
were deeply committed to working for social justice. Pete Seeger, like his friend Woody Guthrie, built
his entire career performing and writing songs towards that goal. He also made sure that his sources
would get their fair share. According to Cowdery, he "[tracked] down Solomon Linda's widow to ensure
that she shared in the proceeds from 'Wimoweh' and he often donated his own profits to activist social
organizations" (329). Joan Baez put herself on the front line and participated in several marches,
including the March From Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan offered one possible solution to the problem facing white folk singers by focusing on his
own music. Like Joan Baez and other folk singers, his music lacked the rhythmic bounce present in the
African-American tradition but his peculiar voice and loose delivery added to his heartfelt lyrics to offer
a somewhat convincing tie to the acoustic blues tradition.
Bob Dylan put out two albums with strong political messages: Freewheelin'
Bob Dylan from 1963 and The Times They Are A-Changin' from 1964. Both albums contained songs
protesting war as well as songs supporting the Civil Rights Movement. Of those, "Only A Pawn in Their
Game" may be the best known. Using the assassination of Medgar Evers as a starting point, the song
is a stark denunciation of Southern politics. It shifts the responsibility for hate crimes and racism away
from the "poor white man" and puts it on the populist politicians pulling the strings in the shadow. "It
ain't him to blame" goes the refrain, "he's only a pawn in their game".
By 1965, Dylan turned its back completely on the quest for authenticity which Seeger pursued. His
next album, Highway 61 Revisited from 1965 features electric guitar, organ, drums and, on some
tracks, tambourine, the quintessential "gospel" percussion. Al Kooper, who played keyboards for this
album was quoted by Craig Werner as describing the results this way: "[my] 'twisted Jewish equivalent
of gospel' mixed with Dylan's 'primitive, twisted equivalent of rock and roll'" (80). It is true that several
songs on this recording borrowed heavily from blues practices, but the results, while being close to
what some rock group were achieving at the time, sound to this author closer to Country music. This is
probably due in great part to the use of slide guitar on several tracks.
Bob Dylan: “The Death of Emmit Till”
"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.
Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the
street.
Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.
And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must
refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music