We Shall Overcome

SONG We Shall Overcome

WRITTEN BY  Guy Carawan, Frank Hamilton, Zilphia Horton, Pete Seeger

PEFORMED BY Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Seeger, SNCC Freedom Singers, many others.


APPEARS ON Joan Baez in Concert Part 2 (1963); We Shall Overcome (Mahalia Jackson, 1999); We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert (Pete Seeger, 1989 release of 1963 performance); many others.

Perhaps no anthem of the Civil Rights movement resonated as acutely with white liberals as "We Shall Overcome." While the reason remains elusive, a relatively easy transition from spiritual to the folk idiom surely helped, as did the song's early identification with the post-War labor movement. At any rate, the melding of an inspirational melody with a trenchant articulation of the tactics, values, and aims of the Civil Rights movement also expressed the values of liberalism at large. The song lives still, translated into languages around the world and recorded by such prominent artists as Bruce Springsteen.

It isn't exactly known when "We Shall Overcome" began its hundred-year tortuous trek from the bitter cotton fields of the slave holding South to bellwether song of the Civil Rights movement and centerpiece of a memorable presidential address. In 1867, The Atlantic's Thomas Wentworth Higgenson wrote about a spiritual called "Many Thousands Gone" (also known as "No More Auction Block For Me") that is now thought to have supplied the melody of "We Shall Overcome." This began a complex time line that looks something like this:

• 1900: Charles Albert Tindley writes "I'll Overcome Someday," which becomes the template for the lyrics to "We Shall Overcome." Tindley uses a different tune.
• Stock religious music phrases like "deep in my heart" are absorbed into Tindley's lyrics.
• 1900-45: Tindley's lyrics are melded to "Many Thousands Gone" and the new song becomes a labor movement standard.
• 1930s: Tobacco workers bring "I Shall Overcome" to the Highlander Folk School, which trains labor activists and later Civil Rights movement activists.
• 1945-56: Highlander music director Zilphia Horton hears the song either from students or while marching in a picket line.
• 1947: Pete Seeger, a founder of Highlander changed, changes the chorus from "I'll overcome" to "We shall overcome" ("I think I liked a more open sound") and adds new verses.
• 1959: New Highlander Musical director Guy Carawan makes the song a standard part the school's new focus, that of training students in techniques of nonviolent resistance.
• 1959-60: Police raids on Highlander results in jail time for many students. They sing "We Shall Overcome" as way of boosting morale, and in doing so add the final touches of lyrics and rhythms.
• 1960: Carawan leads a performance of the song at the initial meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. From there, it disperses throughout the Civil Rights movement and becomes the movement's most well-known song.
• 1963: Joan Baez sings "We Shall Overcome" before hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington.
• 1965: In the  violent wake of the Selma-to-Birmingham march, a determined President Lyndon Johnson uses "We Shall Overcome" as the rhetorical fulcrum of an address to Congress calling for Voting Rights legislation:

Civil Rights movements around the world adapted "We Shall Overcome," including movements in Bangladesh, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. As recently as 2009,  Joan Baez recorded a version for the Iran protesters, with lyrics in Farsi. It has also been translated into Bengali, Hindi, and Malayalm.

How does one account for the international success of a hybrid song that combines a field spiritual melody with lyrics written by a turn-of-the-century hymn composer and a radical white folk singer?

For one thing, there is the nature of the song itself, which struck a note of liberation from its very beginnings in those brutal fields. Lindley's lyrics added key elements of faith and transcendence and Seeger's adjustments returned the song to its roots of freedom and justice. He also introduced a critical element of community by changing "I will" to "We shall." The melody itself is irresistibly hypnotic and lends itself to circumstances as intimate and frightening as a jail cell to the comfort and solidarity of a mass gathering. Tragically, one South African prisoner sang it on the gallows.

Moreover, each verse iterates a tactic and value of the movement and of core liberal values at large. "We shall overcome" speaks to the conviction that injustice will be defeated and the world made better. "We'll walk hand in hand," "we are not alone," and "the whole wide world around" reflect the belief that solidarity of action will encourage sympathizers outside of the movement and eventually everyone else to join the cause. And "we shall all be free" of course identifies the ultimate aim of the movement.

Taken as a whole, the the lyrics of "We of Shall Overcome" offer a world in which persistence, solidarity, freedom, courage, compassion and human love, unity across color and class defeat injustice, poverty, bigotry, and despair. It is the fundamental liberal vision in which society, country, and law exist to advance the welfare and equality of a community of all, regardless of race, religion, or political belief. Or, as President Johnson put it in the speech above, "to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man." In this sense, "We Shall Overcome" reflects core liberal values in a way that no other song does, or is ever likely to.

LYRICS
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
That we shall overcome some day

We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand some day

CHORUS

We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day

CHORUS

We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid today

CHORUS

We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone today

CHORUS

The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day

CHORUS

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS

Joan Baez sings to audience of rapt British young people in the BBC studios:



Pete Seeger brought this version with him from the Highlander School:



Martin Luther King, who credited "We Shall Overcome" with helping unify the movement, incorporated it into a 1968 speech, one of his last:



Mahalia Jackson, from the late 60s:



The SNCC Freedom Singers reprise "We Shall Overcome" at Chicago's Woodson Regional Library in 2007:



Joan Baez again, dedicated to the Tehran protesters and with some verses in Farsi: