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Arts > Music > USA > Country, Folk > Guy Carawan 1927-2015
Guy Carawan singing “We Shall Overcome” with protesters at Virginia State University in 1960.
Photograph: Eve Arnold Magnum Photos
Guy Carawan Dies at 87; Taught a Generation to Overcome, in Song By MARGALIT FOX NYT MAY 7, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/
Guy Hughes Carawan Jr. 1927-2015
On an April night in 1960, Guy Carawan stood before a group of black students in Raleigh, N.C., and sang a little-known folk song.
With that single stroke, he created an anthem that would echo into history, sung at the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965, in apartheid-era South Africa, in international demonstrations in support of the Tiananmen Square protesters, at the dismantled Berlin Wall and beyond.
The song was “We Shall Overcome.”
Mr. Carawan, a white folk singer and folklorist (...), did not write “We Shall Overcome,” nor did he claim to.
The song, variously a religious piece, a labor anthem and a hymn of protest, had woven in and out of American oral tradition for centuries, embodying the country’s twinned history of faith and struggle.
Over time, it was further polished by professional songwriters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/
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