Songs of Change - Equality
No one knows the exact origin of the song of change;An NPR 100 report said, It has been a civil rights song for 50 years now, heard not just in the U.S. but in North Korea, in Beirut, in Tiananmen Square, in South Africa's Soweto Township. But "We Shall Overcome" began as a folk song, a 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 Tindley, published a version in 1901: "I'll Overcome Someday."
The song "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."
Another report credited Louise Shropshire, a granddaughter of slaves and an African-American Baptist choir director with the beginnings of the song in her gospel hymn by the name of, "If My Jesus Wills."
In its most popular times it was sung first as union labor issue song but quickly became a civil rights anthem.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson appeared before Congress and 70 million Americans watching on television, calling for legislation that would ensure every citizen the right to vote.
"It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life," Johnson declared in the speech. "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." The Inspiring Force Of 'We Shall Overcome'
While prophets of old first cried "Let my people go" and "repent" the relentlessness of the cry for justice continues to ring true yet today. With the cry of "Black Lives Matter" to the "gender pay gap" we continue to be faced with the infectious song of change. Whether we agree with the cry or not, it continues to be heard. The first baptismal creed from Galatians reminds us:
"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
Click here to listen to the:
Morehouse College Choir singing - We Shall Overcome.
Loving God, help us to sing a song of justice that swells our hearts and fills our minds and that makes us one with your son. Remind us to look for the outcast, the forgotten and the oppressed that we might walk with them as they overcome the pains of this world. Amen.
