Editing We Shall Overcome (section)

==Origins as gospel, folk, and labor song==
"I'll Overcome Some Day" was a hymn or [[gospel music]] composition by the Reverend [[Charles Albert Tindley]] of [[Philadelphia]] that was first published in 1901.<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/NSoG1900/27 |title=New Songs of the Gospel |chapter=I'll Overcome Some Day |first=C. Albert |last=Tindley |publisher=Hall-Mack Co. |location=Philadelphia |year=1900}}</ref> A noted minister of the [[Methodist Episcopal Church]], Tindley was the author of approximately 50 gospel hymns, of which "We'll Understand It By and By" and "[[Stand by Me (Charles Albert Tindley song)|Stand By Me]]" are among the best known. The published text bore the epigraph, "Ye shall overcome if ye faint not", derived from [[Epistle to the Galatians|Galatians]] 6:9: "And let us not be weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." The first stanza began:

{{poemquote|The world is one great battlefield,
With forces all arrayed;
If in my heart I do not yield,
I'll overcome some day.}}

Tindley's songs were written in an idiom rooted in [[African-American culture|African American folk traditions]], using pentatonic intervals, with ample space allowed for improvised interpolation, the addition of "blue" thirds and sevenths, and frequently featuring short refrains in which the congregation could join.<ref>Horace Clarence Boyer, "Charles Albert Tindley: Progenitor of Black-American Gospel Music", ''The Black Perspective in Music'' 11: No. 2 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 103–132.</ref> Tindley's importance, however, was primarily as a lyricist and poet whose words spoke directly to the feelings of his audiences, many of whom had been freed from [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]] only 36 years before he first published his songs, and were often impoverished, illiterate, and newly arrived in the North.<ref>Boyer, [1983], p. 113. "Tindley was a composer for whom the lyrics constituted its major element; while the melody and  were handled with care, these elements were regarded as subservient to the text."</ref> "Even today," wrote musicologist Horace Boyer in 1983, "ministers quote his texts in the midst of their sermons as if they were poems, as indeed they are."<ref>Boyer (1983), p. 113.</ref>

A letter printed on the front page of February 1909, ''United Mine Workers Journal'' states: "Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome'." This statement implied that the song was well-known, and it was also the first acknowledgment of such a song having been sung in both a secular context and a mixed-race setting.<ref name="theatlantic-whoowns"/><ref name="ars-overcomes it">{{cite web|title=Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over "We Shall Overcome"|url=https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/lawyers-who-won-happy-birthday-copyright-case-sue-over-we-shall-overcome/|website=Ars Technica|date=13 April 2016|access-date=13 July 2016}}</ref><ref>The United Mine Workers was racially integrated from its founding and was notable for having a large black presence, particularly in Alabama and West Virginia. The Alabama branch, whose membership was three-quarters black, in particular, met with fierce, racially-based resistance during a strike in 1908 and was crushed. See Daniel Letwin, "Interracial Unionism, Gender, and Social Equality in the Alabama Coalfields, 1878–1908", ''The Journal of Southern History'' LXI: 3 (August 1955): 519–554.</ref>

Tindley's "I'll Overcome Some Day" was believed to have influenced the structure for "We Shall Overcome",<ref name="theatlantic-whoowns"/> with both the text and the melody having undergone a process of alteration. The tune has been changed so that it now echoes the opening and closing melody of "No More Auction Block For Me",<ref>James Fuld tentatively attributes the change to the version by Atron Twigg and Kenneth Morris. See James J. Fuld, ''The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk'' (noted by Wallace and Wallechinsky)1966; New York: Dover, 1995). According to [[Alan Lomax]]'s ''The Folk Songs of North America'', "No More Auction Block For Me" originated in [[Canada]] and it was sung by former slaves who fled there after [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|Britain abolished slavery in 1833]].</ref> also known from its refrain as "Many Thousands Gone".<ref>Eileen Southern, ''The Music of Black Americans: A History'', Second Edition (Norton, 1971): 546–47, 159–60.</ref> This was number 35 in [[Thomas Wentworth Higginson]]'s collection of Negro Spirituals that appeared in the ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'' of  June 1867, with a comment by Higginson reflecting on how such songs were composed (i.e., whether the work of a single author or through what used to be called "communal composition"):

{{blockquote|text=Even of this last composition, however, we have only the approximate date and know nothing of the mode of composition. [[Allan Ramsay (poet)|Allan Ramsay]] says of the ''Scots Songs'', that, no matter who made them, they were soon attributed to the minister of the parish whence they sprang. And I always wondered, about these, whether they had always a conscious and definite origin in some leading mind, or whether they grew by gradual accretion, in an almost unconscious way. On this point, I could get no information, though I asked many questions, until at last, one day when I was being rowed across from Beaufort to Ladies' Island, I found myself, with delight, on the actual trail of a song. One of the oarsmen, a brisk young fellow, not a soldier, on being asked for his theory of the matter, dropped out a coy confession. "Some good spirituals," he said, "are start jess out o' curiosity. I been a-raise a sing, myself, once."

My dream was fulfilled, and I had traced out, not the poem alone, but the poet. I implored him to proceed.

"Once we boys," he said, "went for to tote some rice, and de nigger-driver, he keep a-calling on us; and I say, 'O, de ole nigger-driver!' Den another said, 'First thing my mammy told me was, notin' so bad as a nigger-driver.' Den I made a sing, just puttin' a word, and den another word."

Then he began singing, and the men, after listening a moment, joined in the chorus as if it were an old acquaintance, though they evidently had never heard it before. I saw how easily a new "sing" took root among them.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=The Atlantic Monthly |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/issues/1867jun/spirit.htm |title=Negro Spirituals |first=Thomas Wentworth |last=Higginson |date=June 1867 |volume=19 |number=116 |pages=685–694}}</ref>}}

[[Bob Dylan]] used the same melodic motif from "No More Auction Block" for his composition, "[[Blowin' in the Wind]]".<ref>From the sleeve notes to Bob Dylan's "Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3" – "...it was Pete Seeger who first identified Dylan's adaptation of the melody of this song ["No More Auction Block"] for the composition of "Blowin' in the Wind". Indeed, Dylan himself was to admit the debt in 1978, when he told journalist Marc Rowland: "Blowin' in the Wind" has always been spiritual. I took it off a song called "No More Auction Block" – that's a spiritual, and "Blowin' in the Wind sorta follows the same feeling..."</ref> Thus similarities of melodic and rhythmic patterns imparted cultural and emotional resonance ("the same feeling") towards three different, and historically very significant songs.

Music scholars have also pointed out that the first half of "We Shall Overcome" bears a notable resemblance to the famous lay Catholic hymn "[[O Sanctissima]]", also known as "The Sicilian Mariners Hymn", first published by a London magazine in 1792 and then by an American magazine in 1794 and widely circulated in American hymnals.<ref name=Bobetsky>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dT_xBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1 |title=We Shall Overcome: Essays on a Great American Song |first=Victor V. |last=Bobetsky |pages=1–13 |date=2015 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |access-date=October 18, 2016|isbn=9781442236035 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NsMPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA342 |title=Drossiana. Number XXXVIII. The Sicilian Mariner's Hymn to the Virgin |first=William |last=Seward |author-link=William Seward (anecdotist) |journal=European Magazine |volume=22 |number=5 |date=November 1792 |pages=342, 385–386 |access-date=October 26, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.cdss.org/elibrary/Easmes/Source0/S000893.htm |title=Prayer of the Sicilian Mariners |editor-first=Robert |editor-last=Shaw |journal=The Gentleman's Amusement |date=May 1794 |page=25 |access-date=October 26, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.hymnary.org/tune/sicilian_mariners |title=The Psalter Hymnal Handbook |editor-first1=Emily |editor-last1=Brink |editor-first2=Bert |editor-last2=Polman |date=1988 |access-date=October 18, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=http://taylorhousemuseum.org/history/charles-albert-tindley/ |title=The People's Almanac #2 |editor-first1=David |editor-last1=Wallechinsky |editor-first2=Irving |editor-last2=Wallace |pages=806–809 |date=1978 |access-date=October 18, 2016 |archive-date=February 25, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150225110157/http://taylorhousemuseum.org/history/charles-albert-tindley/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> The second half of "We Shall Overcome" is essentially the same music as the 19th-century hymn "I'll Be All Right".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/birth-of-a-freedom-anthem.html |title=Birth of a Freedom Anthem |first1=Ethan J. |last1=Kytle |first2=Blain |last2=Roberts |newspaper=The New York Times |date=March 15, 2015}}</ref> As Victor Bobetsky summarized in his 2015 book on the subject: "'We Shall Overcome' owes its existence to many ancestors and to the constant change and adaptation that is typical of the folk music process."<ref name=Bobetsky/>