Music and the Civil Rights Movement
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.”
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.”