Editing We Shall Overcome (section)

{{Short description|Protest song of the civil rights movement}}
{{about|the protest song|other uses|We Shall Overcome (disambiguation)}}
{{listen |title="We Shall Overcome" |filename=Joan Baez performs We Shall Overcome Feb 09 2010.webm|description=[[Joan Baez]] performs "We Shall Overcome" at the White House in front of President [[Barack Obama]], at a celebration of music from the period of the civil rights movement.|pos=right }}

"'''We Shall Overcome'''" is a [[gospel song]] that is associated heavily with the U.S. [[civil rights movement]]. The origins of the song are unclear; it was thought to have descended from "I'll Overcome Some Day," a hymn by [[Charles Albert Tindley]], while the modern version of the song was first said to have been sung by tobacco workers led by Lucille Simmons during the [[1945–1946 Charleston Cigar Factory strike]] in [[Charleston, South Carolina]]. 

In 1947, the song was published under the title "'''We Will Overcome'''" in an edition of the ''[[People's Songs]] Bulletin'', as a contribution of and with an introduction by [[Zilphia Horton]], then-music director of the [[Highlander Folk School]] of Monteagle, Tennessee—an adult education school that trained union organizers. She taught it to many others, including People's Songs director [[Pete Seeger]], who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as [[Frank Hamilton (musician)|Frank Hamilton]] and [[Joe Glazer]].

In 1959, the song began to be associated with the civil rights movement as a [[protest song]], when [[Guy Carawan]] stepped in with his and Seeger's version as song leader at Highlander, which was then focused on [[nonviolent]] civil rights activism. It quickly became the movement's unofficial anthem. Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as [[Joan Baez]], sang the song at rallies, folk festivals, and concerts in the [[Northern United States|North]] and helped make it widely known. Since its rise to prominence, the song, and songs based on it, have been used in a variety of protests worldwide.

The U.S. [[copyright]] of the ''People's Songs Bulletin'' issue which contained "We Will Overcome" expired in 1976, but [[The Richmond Organization]] (TRO) asserted a copyright on the "We Shall Overcome" lyrics, registered in 1960. In 2017, in response to a lawsuit against TRO over allegations of [[copyfraud|false copyright claims]], a U.S. judge issued an opinion that the registered work was insufficiently different from the "We Will Overcome" lyrics that had fallen into the [[public domain]] because of [[copyright renewal|non-renewal]]. In January 2018, the company agreed to a settlement under which it would no longer assert any copyright claims over the song.

In 2025, the publication ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' ranked Seeger's adaptation of the song at number 8 on its list of "The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time."<ref>{{cite news |title=The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-protest-songs-1235154848/ |publisher=Rolling Stone |date=27 January 2025 |access-date=29 January 2025}}</ref>