Unless you were around for the folk revival era in the late 1950’s − early 1960’s, you probably don’t know who Guy Carawan was. He co-wrote and popularized the protest song “We Shall Overcome” in the American Civil Rights Movement by teaching it to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. He just died at the age of 87.
Wrongo has written about the genealogy of this song:
The story behind the story of We shall Overcome is that the song is based on the early hymn “U Sanctissima.” Charles Albert Tindley, a minister in Philadelphia, added new words in 1901 and called his new hymn “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” In the ensuing decades, the song became a favorite at black churches throughout the American south, often sung as “I Will Overcome.” Eventually, the song was brought to a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN. The school’s cultural director was Zilphia Horton. Pete Seeger visited the school and changed “We will overcome” to “We shall overcome.” Guy Carawan, a great folk artist who plays the hammer dulcimer, was then a music director at the Highlander School. He introduced it to civil rights activists during a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting in 1960. Frank Hamilton was in Seeger’s band.
The song’s copyright includes Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, but omits Charles A. Tindley.
Carawan lived in California at the beginning of the folk revival movement, but ended up at Highlander, a place famous for its role in left-wing southern organizing in the 20th century. Few know that Rosa Parks had already trained at Highlander on civil rights issues before refusing to move to the back of the bus which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King had visited Highlander as well.
In 2013, NPR’s Noah Adams had a piece about Carawan and the song. Apparently, Carawan heard the song in the early 1950’s when he was finishing graduate work in sociology at UCLA and doing some singing on the side. He also learned about the Highlander Center, and eventually that’s where he spent most of the rest of his life. He told a history of the song:
I first heard this song from a friend of mine, Frank Hamilton. He taught me this song, and he also had put some chords to it [on guitar]…When I came to Highlander in 1959, Zilphia Horton had died, and I had some singing and musical skills and they needed somebody there. So by the time I came to Highlander, I was playing it with the guitar…
Today, few people sing at civil protests. Somehow, outside of concerts and church, we have lost an understanding of the power of shared singing, of unrestrained sincerity, and the strength it provides to the group.
But its power was important to Dr. King. Here is what he said about the song on March 31, 1968, just days before his death:
There’s a little song that we sing in our movement down in the South. I don’t know if you’ve heard it…You know, I’ve joined hands so often with students and others behind jail bars singing it: ‘We shall overcome.’ Sometimes we’ve had tears in our eyes when we joined together to sing it, but we still decided to sing it: ‘We shall overcome.’ Oh, before this victory’s won, some will have to get thrown in jail some more, but we shall overcome.
One difference between the civil rights movement, which resulted in political change, and the Vietnam demonstrations which did not, was the power of churches working together with students, singing a song that reflected the struggle. Regardless of whether it was sung by Mahalia Jackson, the earnest Carawan, Pete Seeger, or simply kids carrying signs, it had a power to inspire.
A successful movement also required a charismatic leader like Martin Luther King, Jr. who could tell a story, and take America on the journey with him.
Guy Carawan isn’t well known today, but he was really important to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and he will be missed. Here is Guy Carawan singing “We Shall Overcome”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tftdes9dp-A
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.
Funny about the whole matter of organizers. It turns out that the KKK was right in a small way, that some of those “stirring up trouble” were outsiders. Of course others were locals. Decades after the civil rights era, when Sarah Palin expressed scorn over Obama’s work as an organizer, she was in essence taking on the role of the old KKK.
I did not know the writer of We Shall Overcome, but the song was ubiquitous, simple and true.