BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY The Freedom Singers, a group that formed in 1962 in Albany, Georgia to educate communities about civil rights issues through song, consisted of four black members all under the age of twenty-one: Cordell Reagon (tenor), Bernice Johnson Reagon (alto), Charles Neblett (bass), and Rutha Mae Harris (soprano).[1] The Freedom Singers toured the South, sometimes performing as many as four concerts a day. The songs were mostly spirituals and hymns, with "characteristic call-and-response" and free improvisation. Venues included around 200 college campuses, churches, house parties, demonstrations, marches, and jails. Often, the Freedom singers were jailed for refusing to leave an area, while supporters and sympathizers also risked police br9 Present Day Freedom Singers
Sit-ins and the History of Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee(SNCC)
On February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four African American college students protested segregation and Jim Crow laws by sitting at a "whites-only" lunch counter. Using sit-ins as a means of protest became increasingly popular throughout the South, and the anti-segregationist organizers began to see college students as a potential resource. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), played a central role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded in early 1960 in Raleigh, North Carolina in response to the success of a surge of sit-ins in Southern college towns, where black students refused to leave restaurants in which they were denied service based on their race. This form of nonviolent protest brought SNCC to national attention, throwing a harsh public light on white racism in the South. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) called a conference later that year to found a new organization, and from this grew the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, usually pronounced "snick"). Joining forces with Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), white and black activists rode buses together into Southern towns to protest segregated bus terminals. Soon the SNCC established a reputation as the "shock troops" of the Civil Rights movement.
Freedom Singers' Connection to SNCC
The Freedom Singers were intrinsically connected to SNCC, which was formed on April 16, 1960, in Raleigh, North Carolina to organize against growing injustice and violence against black people. The group's main focus was to educate the black community about their basic freedoms, including the right to vote, and encourage the integration of "whites-only" territory. Cordell Reagon, one of the field secretaries of SNCC, was the founding member of the Freedom Singers. SNCC planned and funded the Freedom Singers' tours and paid the members ten to twenty dollars a week to work as field secretaries for the movement. These young field secretaries were usually "dropped off" in communities where they had to arrange for their own food and lodging. Often group members would stay with families,helping with chores and educating children. The original group disbanded in 1963; at that time SNCC executive secretary Jim Forman sent Matthew Jones to Atlanta to reorganize the group.
Civil Rights Movement and Singing
Singing was a link between the church and the civil rights movement. The songs, influenced by gospel, rhythm and blues, and soul music, and which have a hymn-like quality, show a relationship between "secular and spiritual elements" with ornamented, richly harmonized and syncopated part singing. "Singing was integral" to the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s, helping to bring young black Americans together to work for racial equality. Some think of the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s as "the greatest singing movement in our nation's history." The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called music "the soul of the movement." But although the civil rights movement is closely associated with music, attempts to educate the public through music were actually not that common. The SNCC Freedom Singers were an exception, blending spoken and musical communication to educate the public. Bernice Johnson Reagon once stated that the Freedom singers were, in fact, "a singing newspaper." Singing together gave protesters strength to participate in demonstrations and freedom rides—and to endure jail time, verbal and physical assaults, police dog attacks, and high-pressure fire hoses aimed at them. Singing these songs united the protesters in their common goal: freedom and equality.
Altering Lyrics and Style for the Cause
Because the melodies and lyrics were so familiar to their black American listeners, the Freedom Singers were able to build on already-established contexts to create metaphors that related to their cause. Some members of the black community, in fact, did not care for the "old Negro spirituals" that spoke of slavery and desperation. By altering the text of the traditional music, the Freedom Singers paid homage to the past while aligning with current struggles. And because people were familiar with the music, they could easily learn it and "orally transfer" the new message.
Bernice Johnson Reagon points out that many had not heard the type of music that the Freedom singers were performing because of their new approach. For example, when they performed "We Shall Overcome," they "threw in additional slides and calls in the song, pushing the song higher and higher" which changed the way the song was sung "from that point on." Johnson Reagon notes that this approach reflected the regional congregational style in southwest Georgia, which had its own "enriched style" of singing and harmonizing. She said that when she changed the phrase "over my head I see trouble in the air" to "over my head I see FREEDOM in the air"—something happened. People realized that these were their songs and they could change them to express what they were feeling."
Notable Songs
The movement's songs were mostly updated traditional African American spirituals. Two gospel songs--"I'll Overcome Someday" and "If My Jesus Wills"—provided the basis for "We Shall Overcome," which has been called the movement's "anthem." The song was sung by labor organizers in the 1940s, and by folk singer Pete Seeger. Martin Luther King Jr. first heard it in the late 1950s. Other songs included "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho," a traditional spiritual about a man who brought down the city of Jericho against all odds, and "Free at Last," quoted by King at the end of his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington: "Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Other songs included This Little Light of Mine" and "Oh, Freedom" among others.
Guy and Candie Carawan, two freedom-movement activists who were scholarly observers, chronicled freedom songs of the 1960s, most of which were adaptations of older known songs.
Notable Venues and Performances
The high point of the Freedom Singers' career occurred in the spring and summer of 1963 when they appeared at the March on Washington, an event that drew 350,000 people. The Freedom Singers contributed to a live album for the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, where the group sang "We Shall Overcome" linking arms with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary. Also in 1963, the Freedom Singers recorded their only studio album for Mercury Records.
The New York Times identified the Freedom Singers as "the ablest performing group" to emerge from a broad field of folk musicians. After recording one album for Mercury in 1963, the original group disbanded.[21]
Freedom Singers Members
Cordell Reagon, the founder of the original Freedom Singers, was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1943.[22] He was known for his many nonviolence training workshops and anti-segregation efforts in the Albany, Georgia, area.[23] The youngest member of SNCC's staff, by 1961 he had been on Freedom Rides, worked in voter registration in Mississippi and sit-in demonstrations in Illinois and Alabama.[24] He was only sixteen when he became active in the civil rights movement. James Forman, the executive secretary of SNCC, called him "the baby of the movement." Reagon, who was Field Secretary for SNCC when he founded the Freedom Singers, was arrested more than 30 times for his anti-segregation actions.[25] Reagon's first wife was Bernice Johnson Reagon. When he was 53, he was found dead in his Berkeley, California apartment—the victim of an apparent homicide.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon, born October 4, 1942, was one of the original Freedom Singers. She attended Albany State University in Georgia, and received a bachelors in history from Spelman College in 1970 and a doctorate in history from Howard University in 1975. She may be best known for her a cappella women's group Sweet Honey in the Rock which she founded in 1973. She was program director and curator for the Smithsonian from 1974 to 1993, and a professor of history at American University from 1993 to 2002. She has performed music and consulted on many film and television projects, and has numerous publications: We Who Believe in Freedom, We'll Understand It Better By and By, Voices of the Civil Rights Movement, and a collection of essays If You Don't Go, don't Hinder Me. Reagon received a MacArthur Fellowship, the Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities, and the 1995 Charles Frankel Prize. She retired from Sweet Honey in the Rock in 2004 but continues to compose and deliver presentations.
Rutha Mae Harris
Rutha Mae Harris was a native of Albany, Georgia, when she became a member of the Freedom Singers at age 21. Harris was arrested three times during her work as a civil rights activist, spending 14 days in jail. Harris thinks of her work with the Freedom Singers as "one of [her] greatest experiences, to be in front of all these people and to be in front of Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr.) and all the other civil rights leaders." While she was working in Alabama,someone shot at the singers' car. Harris thinks of her voice as a "gift from the Lord" to use "for His glory." Johnson Reagon calls Harris "one of the fiercest singers" that she has sung with. Civil rights leaders considered her voice "invaluable." When folk singer Pete Seeger heard the Freedom Singers "he knew it was something special" said Candie Carawan, a singer, author and activist. "The power of their voices, and the message in the songs really conveyed what was happening in the South." Harris still lives in the same single-story house her Baptist minister father build for his eight children.
Charles Delbert Neblett
Charles Neblett, bass, was born in Robinson County, Tennessee in 1941. He was a member of both the original Freedom Singers and the New Freedom Singers, the group formed after the original disbanded. "All the jailings and the beatings and everything we took, we could see the results of that work," he said. "All that work was not in vain." He was asked to perform in the White House in front of President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their children, members of congress, and many national leaders. He was also recently involved in teh 50th anniversary of SNCC in North Carolina.
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