Folk singer who introduced ‘We Shall Overcome’ dies at 87

Folk singer Guy Carawan didn’t write “We Shall Overcome,” the galvanizing anthem of the civil rights movement that the Library of Congress called “the most powerful song of the 20th century.” In fact, its origins remain unclear.

But it was Carawan who introduced the song to civil rights workers in the South in April 1960.

“During the next few months it was not a song,” legendary singer Pete Seeger said in a 2010 interview. “It was the song.”

Carawan, 87, died May 2 in New Market, Tennessee. He was suffering from a form of dementia, said his wife, Candie Carawan.

Some music historians believe that the song was derived from the hymn “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” included in an early 1900s collection by Charles Tindley, an African-American pastor in Philadelphia.

Others say the credit should go to hymn composer Louise Shropshire, whose “If My Jesus Wills” contains the phrase “I do believe, I’ll overcome someday.”

In any regard, the lyrics and music of what became “We Shall Overcome” evolved over decades.

“I first heard the song from a friend of mine, Frank Hamilton,” Carawan said in a 1999 National Public Radio documentary. In the 1950s, Carawan was getting his master’s degree in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and also performing folk music. Hamilton later performed with the famed folk group The Weavers.

Carawan became a volunteer at the Highlander center in rural Tennessee that was devoted to union and civil rights activities. The center emphasized music as a unifying force, and at a three-day conference in April 1960, Carawan taught civil rights protesters several songs, including “Eyes on the Prize” and “I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table.”

But it was “We Shall Overcome” that most resonated with the crowd.

“It was so hopeful, so beautiful,” said Candie Carawan, who met her future husband at that conference. “It was electrifying.”

Two weeks later, he performed by invitation at Shaw University, a historically black school in Raleigh, North Carolina. Again, “We Shall Overcome” was the sensation.

“Everyone stood up, crossed arms and sang,” she said.

The song spread like wildfire, becoming interwoven with the movement – it was sung during nationally televised demonstrations, in cellblocks and at funerals. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked it in some of his most famous speeches.

Carawan didn’t only introduce the song to the movement, he took part in it. In 1963, he and Candie were arrested during a demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama.

Carawan probably will not be remembered as a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement, but the song he chose and sang in the right place at the right time reverberated to the highest level of government.

In 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed Congress on behalf of voting rights legislation, he said, “It is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

“And we shall overcome.”