We Shall Overcome

Back in the early 60s I was a camp counselor for the 4-H at Camp Daddy Allen in Hickory Run State Park.  One year, and I’m not kidding, I taught archery.  

I also taught the kids to sing “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the Civil Rights movement.  It was actually rather strange--a group of white farm kids, mostly Pennsylvania Dutch, singing “We Shall Overcome” in the Hickory Run woods, although at the time it seemed completely reasonable.

Recently the man who popularized that song for the Civil Rights movement, Guy Carawan, died at age 87.  He didn’t write the song, but he taught it to the delegates at the inaugural meeting of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 15, 1960.  

Mr. Carawan’s obituary traces the song back to the 1790s, and, like many folk songs, it underwent many permutations.  The version we sing now is Mr. Carawan’s.

In 1965, when I was a grad student at Penn State, my friend Joe and I were watching Lyndon Johnson’s speech on the Voting Rights Bill.  Johnson ended his speech pointing out that American Negroes were trying to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.  

He ended with this:  “Their cause must be our cause too.  Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.”  

And then he added, “And we shall overcome.”