We Shall Overcome - The Song

History of the Song

"We Shall Overcome" is a gospel song which became a protest song and a key anthem of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

It offered courage, comfort, and hope as protesters confronted prejudice and hate in the battle for equal rights for African Americans.

The song is most commonly attributed as being lyrically descended from "I'll Overcome Some Day", a hymn by Charles Albert Tindley that was first published in 1901.

In the ensuing decades, the song became a favourite at black churches throughout the American south, often sung as "I Will Overcome."

The song evolved at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which was a meeting place and activity centre for civil rights activists founded in 1932

In 1947, striking tobacco workers from Charleston, South Carolina attended a workshop there and introduced the song (as "I Will Overcome") to the cultural director of the school, Zilphia Horton. She began performing the song at her workshops, and taught it to Pete Seeger when he visited the centre.

Who was Pete Seegar?

Seeger published the song in 1948 and began performing it. He changed the title to "We Shall Overcome" and also added two new verses and a banjo part.

When Pete Seeger played his updated version of "We Shall Overcome" to the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., he gave King's civil rights movement its anthem.

Seeger performed the song for King on September 2, 1957 when they attended the 25th anniversary of the Highlander Center in Tennessee, where King gave one of his famous speeches.

The only artist to chart with this song was Joan Baez, whose version reached #90 in the US in November 1963. She performed the song at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 before Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recited the words from "We Shall Overcome" in his final sermon delivered in Memphis on Sunday, March 31, 1968, before his assassination.

Who was Lyndon B. Johnson?

What happened in Selma?

On March 15, 1965, President Johnson delivered a speech in response to recent events in Selma, Alabama, where civil rights protesters had been brutally beaten on "Bloody Sunday." His speech inspired the U.S. Congress to pass key legislation that protected voting rights for African Americans.

Using the phrase “we shall overcome,” borrowed from African American leaders struggling for equal rights, Johnson declares that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.” Johnson reminds the nation that the Fifteenth Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War, gave all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color. But states had defied the Constitution and erected barriers.

Joan Baez performed "We Shall Overcome" at the White House in front of President Barack Obama, at a celebration of music from the period of the Civil Rights Movement (February 9, 2010).

"We Shall Overcome" From Rose Parks to Barack Obama

Thank you!

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