We Shall Overcome

Uncommon card · No. 176963

"We Shall Overcome" is a gospel song that is associated heavily with the U.S. civil rights movement. The origins of the song are unclear; it was thought to have descended from "I'll Overcome Some Day," a hymn by Charles Albert Tindley, while the modern version of the song was first said to have been sung by tobacco workers led by Lucille Simmons during the 1945–1946 Charleston Cigar Factory strike in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1947, the song was published under the title "We Will Overcome" in an edition of the People's Songs Bulletin, as a contribution of and with an introduction by Zilphia Horton, then the music director of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee—an adult education school that trained union organizers. She taught it to many others, including People's Songs director Pete Seeger, who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as Frank Hamilton and Joe Glazer. In 1959, the song began to be associated with the civil rights movement...

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