Civil Rights Music
There are some good print-on-paper sources for the
history of music and protest in America. Most also provide
song lyrics and pictures of singers, professional and
"just folks." These are starting points:
Denisoff, R. Serge. Great Day Coming: Folk Music
and the American Left. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1971.
Denisoff, R. Serge. Sing a Song of Social Significance.
Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University
Popular Press, 1983.
Denisoff, R. Serge, and Richard A. Peterson, editors.
The Sounds of Social Change: Studies in Popular
Culture. Chicago, Rand McNally, 1972. Collection
of essays.
Glazer, Tom, comp. Songs of Peace, Freedom, and
Protest. New York, D. McKay Co., 1970. With helpful
notes by Glazer.
Reed,Thomas Vernon. The Art of Protest: Culture
and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets
of Seattle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2005. This is a broader study, extending beyond
just music.
Seeger, Pete, and Bob Reiser, compilers. Carry
It On!: The Story of America's Working People in Song
and Picture. Bethlehem, PA: Sing Out, 1991.
Recordings:
Folkways, the record company that produced albums of
many of America's most famous singers of folk songs
and social and political protest music in the last half
of the 20th century, closed its doors several years
ago, but their sound archives are now part of the collections
of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian, in
turn, has reissued many of Folkways' most famous albums
and produced several new anthologies drawn from older
Folkways' disks. These three are probably the best bets
for classroom use:
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. Give Your Hands to Struggle.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways, 1997.
Sing For Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights
Movement through Its Songs. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Folkways ; Cambridge, Mass.: nationally distributed
by Rounder Records, 1990. Geared to grades 4-12. Hymns,
speeches, spirituals, gospel songs, and prayers drawn
from 1960s field recordings in the South. Performances
by SNCC Freedom Singers, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy.
Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American
Freedom Songs 1960-1966. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Folkways. Washington, D.C., p1997. Also designed for
Grades 4-12. Recordings of more than 40 freedom songs
from the 1960s civil rights movement, including "We
Shall Not Be Moved," "This Little Light of
Mine," Oh Freedom," and "We Shall Overcome."
Accompanying booklet includes extensive notes, historical
photos, supplemental discography, and a bibliography.
Web resources:
Wikipedia has good articles with useful links for artists
like Pete Seeger, Guy Carawan, Bernice Johnson Reagon,
Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Ian, and Phil Ochs. Sam
Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, John Coltrane, Chuck
Berry, Curtis Mayfield, Nine Simone, Otis Redding, etc.
The online encyclopedia also provides a convenient full
text of the verses of "We Shall Overcome":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Shall_Overcome
The Highlander School is still very much alive and
well with a website providing a good list of books and
other resources about the history of the school, a list
very much geared to the needs of classroom teachers:
http://www.highlandercenter.org/a-history6.asp
As this is the first essay in History Now that requires
audio resources as well as images and text, I'll violate
my usual rule of providing links only to websites that
are absolutely free. The Smithsonian's' "Global
Sound" website provides downloads of the music
from the three albums I recommended above. Each download
is $.99, but the riches are incredible. Here's the Global
Sound URL:
http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/signup.aspx
Be sure to read their statement of the rules of "fair
use" of materials downloaded from this site. It's
very clear and straightforward:
http://www.si.edu/copyright/
Check out this blog for a fascinating history of "We
Shall Overcome":
http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2006/06/something_about.asp
