Everything about We Shall Overcome totally explained
We Shall Overcome is a
protest song that became a key
anthem of the
US civil rights movement.
Origins
The phrase derives from a
gospel hymn lyrics to a 1901 musical composition by Rev.
Charles Tindley of
Philadelphia who was a Minister of an African Methodist Episcopal Church who noticed there were no hymns or music for his congregation to sing and he did something about it composing many hymns and the lyrics to them of which 50 are known to survive among them---what became known as WE SHALL OVERCOME the lyrics were put into the music of Tindley at a later date. As stated below the new lyrics contained the repeated line "I'll overcome some day", but more likely a later gospel song containing the line "Deep in my heart, I do believe / I'll overcome some day." However, there are also earlier acknowledgements of the song date, with
Pete Seeger, one of the first artists to record the song, noting that various versions of it can be traced to integrated meetings of black and white coal miners in the early 1900s and to black churches in the 1800s.
According to James J. Fuld, Charles Albert Tindley wrote words that are similar to the song we now know, but his tune was different. Sometime between 1900 and 1946, someone married Tindley's words to a 1794 hymn called "
O Sanctissima". Atron Twigg is possibly responsible for the change. .
Role of Highlander Center
In
Charleston, South Carolina in 1946, striking employees of the
American Tobacco Company, mostly
African American women, were singing hymns on the picket line. A woman named Lucille Simmons sang a slow "long meter style" version of the song, as "We'll Overcome".
Zilphia Horton, a
white woman and the wife of the co-founder of the
Highlander Folk School (later Highlander Research and Education Center) learned it from her. The next year she taught it to
Pete Seeger.
Pete Seeger (or someone else, possibly Waldemar Hille, he himself isn't sure and writes that it may have been Highlander's
Septima Clark) changed "We will overcome" to "We shall overcome." He added some verses ("We'll walk hand in hand", "The whole wide world around") and taught it to
Californian singer
Frank Hamilton, who taught it to
Guy Carawan, who re-introduced it to Highlander in 1959. 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 has, on occasion, in concert, credited Carawan with the primary role in teaching and popularizing the song with the civil rights movement.
Widespread adaptation
From 1963, the song was often associated with
Joan Baez, who recorded it and performed it at a number of
Civil Rights marches and years later at the 1969
Woodstock Festival. On
March 15,
1965, President
Lyndon Johnson used the phrase "We shall overcome" in a speech before Congress. Only a few days before, "Bloody Sunday" had occurred on the
Selma to Montgomery marches. The melody alone is used in William Rowland's Symphony #4 in which it's quoted with due credit to Tinsley and a set of variations and arrangements are developed from it for the fourth movement of this work. This is in the great tradition of composers of symphonic works using such works in their works such as Charles Ives (America Gem of the Ocean,Swing Lo Sweet Chariot) and various hymns), Shostokovitch, who quotes a number of well known works in his Symphony #15, Tchaikovsky who uses the Russian Hymn and French National Anthem in his 1812 Overture, Beethoven--who quotes God Save the King in some of his works Dvorak--who quotes in full "Going Home" et al.
The
Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association used the phrase during marches and named the organizations' retrospective
autobiography We Shall Overcome - The History of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland 1968-1978. The
film Bloody Sunday depicts march leader
MP Ivan Cooper and his marches singing the song shortly before the
Bloody Sunday shootings.
Farmworkers in the United States sang the song in Spanish during strikes and grape boycotts of the late 1960s.
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 .
In 1999,
National Public Radio included this song in the "NPR 100," in which NPR's music editors sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century.
(External Link
)
The song found its way to
South Africa in the later years of the anti-
apartheid movement. The song was notably sung by the
U.S. Senator for
New York Robert F. Kennedy, who led anti-apartheid crowds in choruses from the rooftop of his car while touring the country in
1966.
It was also the song
Abie Nathan chose to play as the
Voice of Peace on October 1, 1993.
"In Prague in 1989, during the intense weeks of the Velvet Revolution, hundreds of thousands of people sang this haunting music in unison in Wenceslas Square, both in English and in Czech. With special emphasis on that glorious phrase 'I do believe.' This song’s message of hope and faith in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds gave these protesters the strength to carry on until the evil powers-that-be finally gave up hope themselves. Ironically, the song had been introduced and popularized here thanks to the globetrotting efforts of Pete Seeger, who had been a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the USA from 1942-1950. In the Prague of 1964, Seeger was stunned to find himself being whistled and booed by crowds of bold Czechs when he spoke out against the Vietnam War. But those same crowds loved, learned, and never forgot his rendition of 'We Shall Overcome.' History is full of such rich ironies … if only you're willing to see them."
In
India, its literal translation in Hindi "Hum Honge Kaamyab / Ek Din" became a patriotic/spiritual song during the 1980s, particularly in schools, and the song's popularity has continued.
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 favourite 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 as
Njangal Vijayikkum...... Oru Nal by N. P. Chandrasekharan, an activist of SFI, in 1980. The translation followed the same tune of the original song. Later it was also published in
Student, the monthly of SFI in Malayalam.
Copyright and royalties
Under US Copyright Law; the music of
WE SHALL OVERCOME is the intellectual property of Rev. Charles Tinsley and any family members of successive generations and or the African Methodist Episcopal Church if Tinsley so assigned it. Since this work was composed in 1901; it's as of 2008 public domain. However, Seegar's arrangement and words belong to him et al. Current(2008) US Copyright Law provides 100 years for musical works before they become public domain.
Copyright on the song as arranged by Seeger is held by Seeger, Carawan and Hamilton. Seeger explained that he took out a defensive copyright on advice of his publisher to prevent someone else from doing so and "At that time we didn't know Lucille Simmons' name." All royalties go to the "We Shall Overcome" Fund, administered by Highlander and used to give small grants for cultural expression involving African Americans organizing in the U.S. South.
However, in a similar legal case involving the Kingston Trio or similar group in the case of "Tom Dooley---Hang your Head down Tom Dooley" the court ruled that they'd infringed upon a Yakkin County, North Carolina man's ownership of this song. It is likely that a court would rule the same in the case of the Seegar case outside any arrangements that he's done.
Further Information
Get more info on 'We Shall Overcome'.
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