Freedom Music - Unity is Power

Music of the Freedom Movement

(Click headline to listen to program)

The March on Washington

The second of three programs on music as an instrument of social activism, this episode pays particular attention to material in the Folkways collection which documents and reflects the civil rights struggle, especially through the ten year period between 1955 and 1965. The program draws on such Folkways albums as "Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966) and an audio-verite recording of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington entitled "We Shall Overcome." Original interviews with Bernice Johnson Reagon of the SNCC Freedom Singers and one-time Black Panther activist Angela Davis blend with archival interviews from Smithsonian Folkways to recapture the spirit of the struggle and to provide contemporary context to its meaning.

Folksingers Roger Johnson (left), and Pete Seeger (right) singing "We Shall Overcome at the Palmer's Crossing Community Center. 1964.

"Civil Rights Workers Singing." Selma, Dallas County, summer 1966.

Odetta sang the soundtrack for the civil rights movement.

Here's a song that everyone knew and sang I don't know how many times.

While looking for photos for this post I came on an interesting site called                                             Civil Rights Movement Veterans                                                                                                           which is where I found most of these images. Be sure to visit it, there are many more photos of the period and a whole bunch of very interesting info on the people involved in The Movement