Protest music and the civil rights movement are the focus of a new book by Stephen Stacks, Ph.D., an assistant professor of music at North Carolina Central University (NCCU).
Protest or ‘freedom songs’ were an essential part of the ‘classical’ period of the Civil Rights Movement, bookended by the Montgomery bus boycott of 1954 and the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968.
“Singing was deeply important to people who were leading and guiding the Civil Rights Movement,” said Stacks.
In a way that might be hard to imagine today, group singing was more common. “The original civil rights protesters were predominantly Black church people,” Stacks said. “You could start singing one of hundreds of songs and they would recognize it.”
Among them were songs like “This Little Light of Mine,” “Wade in the Water” and “People Get Ready.”
It was common, said Stacks, for the lyrics of songs to be changed. “We Shall Overcome,” for example, started off as a gospel tune.
“It went through several iterations,” said Stacks. “It was used in a protest in Charleston for a cigar factory workers strike. Then, during the civil rights movement, there was a version of the song taught at Shaw University for those who were organizing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).”
In fact, SNCC had their own singing group, the Freedom Singers.
“They did concerts,” said Stacks. “Not just for entertainment but to educate on what was happening in the South. They called themselves a singing newspaper. It is one of the reasons white students from New England came down south for the Freedom Summer (in 1964).”
By the late 1960s, however, freedom songs became a point of contention. “Malcom X didn’t care for them,” Stacks said. “They felt naïve. Lyrics like “we shall overcome someday” felt passive and not strong enough to him. ‘What do you mean, someday? People are dying today.’”
Likewise, with the rise of younger activists such as the Black Panthers, freedom singing became less important to some.
In a chapter on protests, Stacks gives examples of how freedom singing did not entirely disappear after 1968. Another chapter focuses on the false dichotomy in American memory between the “good” Civil Rights Era in the 1960s – think church singing, Martin Luther King Jr. – vs the ‘bad’ later era with younger secular activists.
“The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song after 1968” evolved from Stack’s doctoral dissertation research, which he started about ten years ago. It is scheduled for publication on May 13 by University of Illinois Press.