“Out of the pressure and needs involved in maintaining group unity while working under intense pressure and physical hostility, the Sit-In Movement developed its culture. Music was the mainstay of that culture.” (Eyerman and Jamison, p. 45, quoting Bernice Johnson Reagon of The Freedom Singers.)
In February, 1960, four black college students from a local university staged a sit-in at a F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, NC, and launched a movement. The waitress told the students they would only be served if they gave up their seats and stood. They refused. The lunch counter closed rather than serve the seated black students. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18615556) (http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/299/entry)
The next day the students returned with 25 additional students. The students were arrested. As the week progressed students from other colleges joined the “sit-ins” which spread to other Greensboro stores. The following week, there were sit-ins in Charlotte, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By the end of the month, the sit-ins had spread to 30 cities in the South. By the end of the year, protestors had succeeded in integrating restaurants in 108 cities across the country. The sit-in tactic was also used in many other types of businesses and places of public accommodation, such as movie theatres and libraries. (Id.)
“The Ballad of the Sit-ins,” words and music by Guy Carawan, Eve Merriam and Norma Curtis (1960) sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock, whose founding member was Bernice Johnson Reagon, one of the original Freedom Singers. (https://youtu.be/IOW8I1k0Jzw)
The time was nineteen sixty, the place the USA,
That February 1st became a history-making day.
From Greensboro across the land
The news spread far and wide,
That quietly and bravely youth took a giant stride.Chorus: Heed the call, Americans all,
Side by equal side,
Sisters, sit in dignity,
Brothers, sit in pride.From Mobile, Alabama to Nashville, Tennessee,
From Denver, Colorado to Washington, D. C.
There rose a cry for freedom, for human liberty,
Oh come along, my brother, and take a seat with me.Chorus
The time has come to prove our faith in all men’s dignity,
We serve the cause of justice, of all humanity
We’re soldiers in the army, with Martin Luther King
Peace and love our weapons, nonviolence is our creed.Chorus
This is a land we cherish, a land of liberty
How can Americans deny all men equality?
Our Constitution says we can’t and Christians, you should know,
Jesus died that morning, so all mankind could know.Chorus
No mobs of violence and hate shall turn us from our goal
No Jim Crow laws nor police state shall stop my free bound soul,
Three thousand students bound in jail still lift their heads and sing,
We’ll travel on to freedom, like songbirds on the wing.Chorus
Although many sit-ins were conducted without incident, there were many occasions when store-owners or observers reacted violently. On one such occasion a store manager in Nashville, Tennessee turned on a fumigation machine and gassed the sit-in protestors with insecticide gas. In many locations sitting-in students were arrested. Arrested protestors refused to make bail, choosing instead to go to jail, a tactic knows as “Jail, not bail.” And, the arrested protestors met their opponents with “freedom songs;” the most prominent of which was “We shall Overcome.” (Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement: Images of a Peoples Movement, http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgcoll.htm); (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-frienship-nine-convictions-vacated-20150128-story.html)
‘‘We Shall Overcome’’, a long time Negro spiritual, became the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. Wyatt T. Walker, executive director of SCLC, said, ‘‘One cannot describe the vitality and emotion this one song evokes across the Southland. I have heard it sung in great mass meetings with a thousand voices singing as one; I’ve heard a half-dozen sing it softly behind the bars of the Hinds County prison in Mississippi; I’ve heard old women singing it on the way to work in Albany, Georgia; I’ve heard the students singing it as they were being dragged away to jail. It generates power that is indescribable.’’ (Carawan and Carawan, We Shall Overcome, p. 11.) “We Shall Overcome,” sung by Pete Seeger. (http://youtu.be/QhnPVP23rzo)
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some dayChorus:
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some dayWe’ll walk hand in hand
We’ll walk hand in hand
We’ll walk hand in hand some dayChorus
We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some dayChorus
We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid some dayChorus
We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone some dayChorus
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some dayChorus
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some dayChorus