We Shall Overcome
Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez, sang the song at rallies, folk festivals, and concerts in the North and helped make it widely known.
In 2017, in response to a lawsuit against TRO over allegations of false copyright claims, a U.S. judge issued an opinion that the registered work was insufficiently different from the "We Will Overcome" lyrics that had fallen into the public domain because of non-renewal.
Tindley's songs were written in an idiom rooted in African American folk traditions, using pentatonic intervals, with ample space allowed for improvised interpolation, the addition of "blue" thirds and sevenths, and frequently featuring short refrains in which the congregation could join.
[3] Tindley's importance, however, was primarily as a lyricist and poet whose words spoke directly to the feelings of his audiences, many of whom had been freed from slavery only 36 years before he first published his songs, and were often impoverished, illiterate, and newly arrived in the North.
"[5] A letter printed on the front page of February 1909, United Mine Workers Journal states: "Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome'."
On this point, I could get no information, though I asked many questions, until at last, one day when I was being rowed across from Beaufort to Ladies' Island, I found myself, with delight, on the actual trail of a song.
[12] Thus similarities of melodic and rhythmic patterns imparted cultural and emotional resonance ("the same feeling") towards three different, and historically very significant songs.
[18] As Victor Bobetsky summarized in his 2015 book on the subject: "'We Shall Overcome' owes its existence to many ancestors and to the constant change and adaptation that is typical of the folk music process.
To keep up their spirits during the cold, wet winter of 1945–1946, one of the strikers, a woman named Lucille Simmons, led a slow "long meter style" version of the gospel hymn, "We'll Overcome (I'll Be All Right)" to end each day's picketing.
(Songs on the album were: "I Ain't No Stranger Now", "Too Old to Work", "That's All", "Humblin' Back", "Shine on Me", "Great Day", "The Mill Was Made of Marble", and "We Will Overcome".)
During a Southern CIO drive, Glazer taught the song to country singer Texas Bill Strength, who cut a version that was later picked up by 4-Star Records.
Carawan and Hamilton, accompanied by Ramblin Jack Elliot, visited Highlander in the early 1950s where they also would have heard Zilphia Horton sing the song.
In 1957, Seeger sang for a Highlander audience that included Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who remarked on the way to his next stop, in Kentucky, about how much the song had stuck with him.
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, North Carolina, in 1960.
[22] Seeger has also publicly, in concert, credited Carawan with the primary role of teaching and popularizing the song within the civil rights movement.
In August 1963, 22-year old folksinger Joan Baez led a crowd of 3,000 in singing "We Shall Overcome" at the Lincoln Memorial during A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington.
[29] It was also the song which Abie Nathan chose to broadcast as the anthem of the Voice of Peace radio station on October 1, 1993, and as a result it found its way back to South Africa in the later years of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
History is full of such ironies – if only you are willing to see them.The words "We shall overcome" are sung emphatically at the end of each verse in a song of Northern Ireland's civil rights movement, Free the People, which protested against the internment policy of the British Army.
[citation needed] In 1999, National Public Radio included "We Shall Overcome" on the "NPR 100" list of most important American songs of the 20th century.
[37] As a reference to the line, in 2009, after the first inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, a man holding the banner, "WE HAVE OVERCOME" was seen near the Capitol, a day after hundreds of people posed with the sign on Martin Luther King Jr.
[39] On June 7, 2010, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame released a new version of the song as a protest against the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
In India, the renowned poet Girija Kumar Mathur composed a literal translation in Hindi "Hum Honge Kaamyab (हम होंगे कामयाब)" which became a popular patriotic/spiritual song during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in schools.
"Amra Korbo Joy" (আমরা করবো জয়)”, is a literal translation by Bengali folk singer Hemanga Biswas, re-recorded by Bhupen Hazarika.
It was a favorite of Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and it was regularly sung at public events after Bangladesh gained its independence in the early 1970s.
Later, it was published in Student, the monthly magazine of SFI in Malayalam as well as in Sarvadesheeya Ganangal (Mythri Books, Thiruvananthapuram), a translation of international struggle songs.
In 2014, a recording of We Shall Overcome arranged by composer Nolan Williams Jr. and featuring mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves was among several works of art, including the poem A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou, were sent to space on the first test flight of the spacecraft Orion.
A copyright registration was made for the song in 1960, which is credited as an arrangement by Zilphia Horton, Guy Carawan, Frank Hamilton, and Pete Seeger, of a work entitled "I'll Overcome", with no known original author.
[47] In April 2016, a lawsuit was filed against TRO and Ludlow by the We Shall Overcome Foundation (WSOF), a group led by producer Isaias Gamboa that was denied permission to use the song in a documentary on its history.
[6][48] The lawyer backing Gamboa's suit, Mark C. Rifkin, was previously involved in a case that invalidated copyright claims over the song "Happy Birthday to You".
[51] On September 8, 2017, Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York issued an opinion that there were insufficient differences between the first verse of the "We Shall Overcome" lyrics registered by TRO-Ludlow, and the "We Will Overcome" lyrics from People's Songs (specifically, the aforementioned replacement of "will" with "shall", and changing "down in my heart" to "deep in my heart") for it to qualify as a distinct derivative work eligible for its own copyright.
