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We Shall Overcome is a protest song that became a key anthem of the US civil rights movement.

Contents 1 History 2 Copyright and royalties 3 See also 4 Notes 5 External links 6 References

The phrase derives from a gospel song, possibly a 1903 song by Rev. Charles Tindley of Philadelphia containing 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.^[1]

According to James J. Fuld's "The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk" (Dover, 1966/1995), Charles Albert Tindley wrote words that are very similar to the song we now know, but his tune was very different. Sometime between 1900 and 1946, someone married Tindley's words to a 1794 hymn called "O Sanctissima". Atron Twigg is possibly the person responsible for making the change. ^[2].

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.^[3]

Pete Seeger (or someone else, 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. ^[4] Seeger has, on occasion, in concert, credited Carawan with the primary role in teaching and popularizing the song with the civil rights movement.

From 1963 on, 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.^[5] Only a few days before, "Bloody Sunday" had occurred on the Selma to Montgomery marches.

Farmworkers in the United States sang the song in Spanish during the 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 We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

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.

The song later found its way to South Africa in the later years of the anti-apartheid movement.^[6] The song was notably sung by the then-U.S. Senator for New York Robert F. Kennedy, who led anti-apartheid crowds in choruses of it from the rooftop of his car whilst touring the country in 1966. ^[7]

It was also the song Abie Nathan chose to play as the Voice of Peace on October 1st 1993.

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 to endure.

In the Bengali-speaking region of India and in Bangladesh there are actually two versions, both of which are incredibly 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 of all time. It was a particular favourite song 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 on the song 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." [Seeger, 1993, 33] All royalties from the song 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.^[8]

• American Civil Rights Movement Timeline
• Pete Seeger
• We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
• Guy Carawan

• Susanne´s Folksong-Notizen, excerpts from various articles, liner notes, etc. about "We Shall Overcome".
• Musical Transcription of "We Shall Overcome". Based on recording of SNCC Freedom Singers with Pete Seeger.
• NPR news article including full streaming versions of Pete Seeger's classic Carnegie hall live recording and Bruce Springsteen's tribute version.
• "Something about that song haunts you" essay on the history of "We Shall Overcome," Complicated Fun, June 9, 2006

• Dunaway, David, How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger, (orig. pub. 1981, reissued 1990). Da Capo, New York, ISBN 0-306-80399-2.
• Seeger, Pete and Blood, Peter (Ed.), Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies (1993). Independent Publications Group, Sing Out Publications, ISBN 1-881322-01-7
• ___, "The We Shall Overcome Fund". Highlander Reports, newsletter of the Highlander Research and Education Center, August-November 2004, p.3.
• We Shall Overcome, PBS Home Video 174, 1990, 58 minutes.