"We Shall Overcome": The History Behind the Ultimate Protest Song

No song in American history has had as much impact as the gospel/folk song "We Shall Overcome." Sung by activists during the 1960s civil rights movement, the song has since traveled far and wide and has come to represent the hope of those struggling to free themselves from oppression, injustice, and inequality.

The song's history is a long and storied one. But, as with many stories that are passed down orally from one generation to the next, there are numerous versions of its derivations. One such story pinpoints its origins in a 1903 gospel song sung by Rev. Charles Tindley of Philadelphia. His version, though, had the line: "I'll overcome some day." Another version suggests that the song's origin came from another gospel song that had the lines: "Deep in my heart, I do believe/I'll overcome some day." But the song's origins, according to folksinger Pete Singer, can also be traced back to the 1800s, when it was sung in black churches, and the early 1900s when integrated black and white coal miners sung it in meetings.

Whatever its true origins, the song began its trek into the American consciousness as late as 1946, when, in Charleston, North Carolina, Black women who went on strike against the American Tobacco Company, sung it on picket lines. One of the strikers, Lucille Simmons, sang a version of "We'll Overcome" in the slow, measured meter the is so familiarly sung in later versions of the song. Zilphia Horton, a white woman who was the wife of the co-founder of the Highlander Folk School, asked Simmons to teach her this version of the song. She introduced it to Pete Seeger, who would later record his own version of it.