Throughline - The song that fueled protests and a legacy of hope

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

In our final installment of AP250, how We Shall Overcome became the anthem of generations of protestors. Today on the show, we revisit an episode from the NPR archives about the legacy of hope found in the lyrics of this timeless song.  Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is America in Pursuit, a limited run series from NPR and Throughline. I'm Randa Diffetta. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. that began 250 years ago. If you listened really closely, you might have noticed, as we did, that there's a song that keeps creeping up in the background of many of our recent stories in this series. It's a song that has fueled war protests, political protests, and the fight for civil rights. There's a little song that we sing in our movement down in the south. I don't know if you've heard it. On this episode, we go deep into the NPR archives to share one of our favorite radio broadcasts. The story of how this song, We Shall Overcome, was passed down from farm workers to churchgoers to student protesters, how its lyrics,

were transformed and how it's left a legacy of hope for so many, not only in the U.S., but around the globe. NPR's Noah Adams reported the story back in 1999 to mark the 70th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth. That's coming up after a quick break. It is not a marching song. It is not necessarily defiant. It is a promise. We shall overcome someday. Deep in my heart, I do believe. We Shall Overcome has been heard in North Korea, in Beirut, in Tiananmen Square, in South Africa's Soweto Township. It has been a civil rights song for years now, but it began as a folk song, work song. Slaves in the fields would sing, I'll be all right someday. It became known in the churches, a Methodist minister, Charles Albert

Tinley, published a version in 1901. I'll overcome someday. The first political use came in 1945 in Charleston, South Carolina. There was a strike against the American Tobacco Company. The workers wanted a raise that were making 45 cents an hour. They marched and sang together on the picket line, We will overcome, and we will win our rights someday. Four decades later, some of the strikers got together for a reunion.

From a 1989 PBS documentary, These are the memories of Delphine Brown, Anna Le Bono, and Corrine Chisholm. When I first heard the song in my church, they sing it in the gospel fast, and people shout at me. We will see the Lord, we will see the Lord, we will see the Lord in my heart someday. And that's the way we used to sing it. In church. In church, but not when you were in a... No, not when we were on the...

When we first started saying it, I thought it was kind of silly. But as the strike went along, it gave me a whole lot of encouragement. And believing that we would overcome, and it made me fight that much harder. And we did overcome. We won it. The tobacco workers' strike, 1945. In 1947, two of the union members from South Carolina traveled to Tennessee and the town of Monteckel. They came for a workshop at the Highlander Folk Center. Blacks and whites had been meeting together about labor issues at Highlander for many years.

Highlander had started with a focus on labor unions. The civil rights struggle came later. It was believed at Highlander that the people who have the problems are the ones who have the answers. It was important to talk together, and especially to sing. The tobacco workers brought their song to Tennessee, and Zilfia Horton, Highlander's music director, started using it in workshops, in Tennessee, and beyond. On this tape from the late 1940s,

she's with a group of farm workers in Montana. This is a song of We Will Overcome. It's a spiritual. I sang it with many different nationality groups. And it's so simple, the idea is so sincere, that it doesn't matter that it comes from the tobacco workers. When I sing it for people,

it becomes their song. We will overcome. We will all over. In 1947, Zofia Horton went to New York City, as she did every year to raise money for Highlander. She sang the song there for Pete Seeger. She had a beautiful alto voice and sang it with no rhythm.

We shall overcome. Down south they called this long meter style of singing hymns. And I gave it kind of oom chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko, chinko. It was medium slow as I sang it, but the banjo kept a steady rhythm going. I remember teaching it to a gang in Carnegie Hall that year, and the following year, I put it in a little music magazine called People's Songs. Over the years, I remember singing it two different ways. I'm usually credited with changing it to Shell,

but there was a black woman who taught its Highlander Center, a wonderful person named Septima Clark, and she always liked Shell too, I'm told. For those who don't know it, now's a good time to learn it. It's not hard, only one line changes in each verse. The next verse says, We'll walk hand in hand. We'll walk hand.

Sing it again. In Southern California, in the early 1950s, the song reached Guy Carawan. He was finishing graduate work in sociology at UCLA and doing some singing himself. He also learned about the Highlander Center in Tennessee, and that's where he ended up. Candy Carawan and her husband have been teaching together at Highlander for many years now. They met as the center's focus was shifting to civil rights, and We Shall Overcome was about to become an inspiring force. Let's see, I first heard this song from a friend of mine, Frank Hamilton.

Frank was my singing partner in Southern California, and he taught me this song, and he also had put some chords to it. He sang the guitar with it, so he had a guitar with harmony like, We shall overcome someday. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe yes, that we shall overcome someday. And when I came to Highlander, 1959, Zulfi Horton had died and I had some

singing in musical skills, and they needed somebody there. So by the time I came to Highlander, I was playing it with a guitar like that. Candy, do you recall the first time you heard the song? I had come south myself from California to Nashville, and it was the spring of 1960 when the sit-ins took place in Nashville. I'd gotten very involved in the sit-ins and came up to a Highlander weekend for students from about a half a dozen cities who'd been carrying on the sit-in movement,

and Guy was there, trying to find out what songs we were using as part of our demonstrations. And mostly we didn't have a lot of songs, and he taught us a number of songs that weekend, and one of them was we shall overcome. And I can remember this electrifying feeling when we heard it, that that song just said exactly

what we were doing and what we were feeling. But two weeks later, at Shaw University, 200 student leaders from around the South had come together to have their own youth gathering, because two weeks later, SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, would be having their gathering. But the students said, no, we're going to have our own gathering and figure out our version of this. But that song caught on that weekend. And then at a certain point, those young singers who knew a lot of acapello styles, they say,

lay that guitar down, boy, we can do this song better, and they put that sort of triplet to it and sang at Acapello with all those harmonies. It had a way of rendering it a style that some very very... powerful young singers got behind and spread. We shall over thought. My Lord. We shall all. The Freedom Singers. The group was organized in Albany, Georgia, by the student nonviolent coordinating committee.

The singers were Cordell Regan, Charles Neblet, Rutha Harris, and Bernice Johnson, who was a preacher's daughter and knew the song as I will overcome. She recalls the change to we shall overcome as a concession that helped bring whites and blacks closer in the civil rights struggle. The left dominated by whites believe that in order to express the group, you should say we. In the black community, if you want to express the group, you have to say I.

Because if you say we, I have no idea who's going to be there. Have you ever been in a meeting? People say, we're going to bring some food tomorrow to feed the people. And you sit there on the bench and say, hmm, I have no idea. It is when I say, I'm going to bring cake. And somebody else said, I'll bring chicken, that you actually know you're going to get a dinner. So there are many black traditional collective expression songs where it's I. Because in order for you to get a group, you have to have eyes.

So you have to have people willing to stand up. And name themselves. However, I remember when the organizers came to Albany, and I was singing, I'll overcome. And I was stopped by Cordell, who says it's not I, it's we. And he had gotten this lesson from Highlander and from Guy. And I looked at him. And, you know, we've been singing this song all of our lives,

and here's this guy who just learned the song, and he's telling us how to sing it. And you know what I said to myself, if you need it, you got it. What that statement does for me is document the presence of black and white people in this country fighting against injustice, and you have black people accepting that need

because they were also accepting that support and that help. The song was carried by the, civil rights movement throughout the south, a song that rose in air that was tinged with tear gas, that was a murmur of men and women at night in a southern jail, and an affirmation sung by hundreds of thousands within sight of the Capitol Dome. On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson used the phrase, we shall overcome, in his voting rights speech. He appeared before Congress and 70 million Americans watching on television. He called for legislation that would assure every citizen the right to vote.

It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too, because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. There may have been some in the civil rights movement who felt that President Johnson co-opted the phrase. But John Lewis watched the speech that night with Martin Luther King.

About the president, Lewis writes, His were the words of a statesman, and more, they were the words of a poet. Anne Lewis adds, Dr. King must have agreed. He wiped away a tear at the point where Johnson said the words, We Shall Overcome. In his book, Walking with the Wind, he tells of joining the movement as a teenager off the farm in Alabama. He became a leader.

He was jailed. He was beaten. His skull was fractured in Selma on the day that was called Bloody Sunday. And he says, We Shall Overcome, sustained him throughout the years of struggle. It is one of the most powerful, at the same time, sacred moment when we were saying we shall overcome. And especially if you have been beaten, arrested in jail, and thrown into a paddy wagon, thrown into some waiting area, and a group just standing there and saying together, we shall overcome. It gave you a sense of faith, a sense of strength to continue to struggle, to continue to push on. And you will lose your sense of fear.

You will prepare to march into hell's fire. None shall be afraid. I still believe that we shall overcome. The power and the promise of the song turned up in many of Dr. King's speeches and sermons. We shall overcome because the Bible is right. You shall reap what's the soul. We shall overcome. Deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome.

And with this faith, we will go out and adjourn the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. And we will be able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. And this will be a great America. So how ever dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are and the violent explosions are, I can still sing, we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the Ark of the Moral Universe is long but it bends toward justice. That final excerpt was from March 31, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving a sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Dr. King was assassinated four days later. We're listening to an excerpt of an arrangement of the song that was commissioned by NPR and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra back in 1999. And that's it, the final episode of our America in Pursuit series. But don't go anywhere on Tuesdays, because starting in September, every Tuesday will be rolling out answers

to questions you, the listeners, have sent us. So stay tuned. that's coming soon. I'm Randab del Fattah. This episode was produced by Nick M. Nevis and Kiana Mogadam, and edited by Julia Redpath with support from the through-line production team.

Music by Ramtin Ada Blui and his band, Drop Electric. Special thanks to Noah Adams, Irene Noguchi, Yolanda Sangueni, Leanna Simpsdrum, Johanna Sturgy, Mary Glendening,

and Lindsay McKenna. Thanks for listening.