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Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Music and the Civil Rights Movement (090.00.00)

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Folk songs were integral to the civil rights movement. During a 1962 trip to Georgia, Pete Seeger (b. 1919) suggested to Bernice Johnson (b. 1942), a singer and field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), that she form a singing group to support the organization. At the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, the SNCC Freedom Singers joined Seeger, Peter [Yarrow] (b. 1938), [Noel] Paul [Stookey] (b. 1937) and Mary [Travers] (1936–2009), Joan Baez (b. 1941), Bob Dylan (b. 1941), and Theodore Bikel (b. 1924) to sing the movement’s anthem “We Shall Overcome.”