We Shall Overcome: Essays on a Great American Song

151 Pages·2014·3.24 MB·English

by  Victor V. Bobetsky associate professor and Director of the Teacher Education Program in Music at Hunter College of the City University of New York

We Shall Overcome
We Shall Overcome
Essays on a Great American Song
Victor V. Bobetsky
Rowman & Littlefield
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
We shall overcome : essays on a great American song / edited by Victor V. Bobetsky.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4422-3602-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-3603-5 (ebook)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. We shall overcome. 2. Protest songs—United States—History and criticism. I.
Bobetsky, Victor V.
ML3561.W45W4 2015
782.42162’13—dc23
2014028787
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Chapter 1 The Complex Ancestry of “We Shall Overcome” 1
Victor V. Bobetsky
Chapter 2 A Folksong in Flight: Pete Seeger and the Genesis
of “We Shall Overcome” 17
Sam A. Rosenthal
Chapter 3 The SNCC Freedom Singers: Ambassadors for Justice 27
Deanna F. Weber
Chapter 4 T he Missing Blue Note: Transmutation and
Appropriation from the Gospel Lineage of
“We Shall Overcome” 43
Andrew Aprile
Chapter 5 A nalysis and History of Major Choral Arrangements
of “We Shall Overcome” 59
Christopher Flannery-McCoy
Chapter 6 The Making of a Symposium 77
Victor V. Bobetsky
v
vi • Contents
Chapter 7 “ No More Auction Block for Me” and “We Shall
Overcome”: Freedom Songs for the Middle School
Music Classroom 91
Brooke Berry-Wolf 
Chapter 8 B eyond “We Shall Overcome”: The Lasting Legacy
of Freedom Songs 99
Patricia Woodard
Appendix A Concert Program 121
Appendix B Resources for Educators 123
Index 129
Contributors 139
Acknowledgments
I thank Jennifer J. Raab, President of Hunter College of the City University
of New York, for her steadfast support of this project through the 2013 and
2014 President’s Fund for Faculty Advancement.
I thank our six talented and dedicated contributing authors for their colle-
giality and professionalism. They were a joy to work with. Special thanks go
to Sam A. Rosenthal for generously sharing his perspective and experience
and to Patricia Woodard and Elliott Kaback for their expert and invaluable
help with organizing and verifying citations and bibliographical formatting.
Thanks go to Professor Mark Spicer, Professor Igor Tomic, Professor Paul
Mueller, and Artie Bennett for the generous guidance and advice they of-
fered throughout the process of creating this book.
Sincere thanks to senior acquisitions editor, Bennett Graff, to Monica
Savaglia, and to Andrew Yoder, June Sawyers, and David Wolfson for their
help with technical aspects of the book’s production.
Special thanks go to my wife, Maria C. Bobetsky, for her patience, good
advice, and encouragement.
vii
C H A P T E R O N E
The Complex Ancestry
of “We Shall Overcome”
Victor V. Bobetsky
“We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of America’s civil rights movement, is
a folk song that has played a significant role in American and world history
and continues to inspire people around the world who struggle for peace and
justice. At different points in time, “We Shall Overcome” has been used as
a labor movement song, a civil rights song, a hymn, and a protest song. This
chapter summarizes current knowledge of the origins and evolution of the
song’s melody and lyrics by examining seven potential antecedent songs and
describing the contributions of key individuals associated with some of these
songs. In addition, this chapter offers a new perspective on the relationship
between two of “We Shall Overcome’s” earliest potential antecedents.
Antecedents and Relatives of “We Shall Overcome”
An exploration of the song’s ancestry takes us on a journey through two cen-
turies of African American and American music and includes one European
hymn. We will focus on seven songs whose melody and/or words are related
to and may have influenced “We Shall Overcome.” They are “O Sanctis-
sima,” “No More Auction Block,” “I’ll Overcome Some Day” (Tindley), “I’ll
Be Like Him Someday” (Martin), “I’ll Overcome Someday” (Morris/Twigg),
“I’ll Be All Right,” and the labor song “I Will Overcome.” Thinking of these
songs as members of a musical family tree—one limb representing the music
and another the words—can help provide a historical perspective and iden-
tify significant stages in “We Shall Overcome’s” development. However, an
1