Editing We Shall Overcome (section)

==Role of the Highlander Folk School==
In October 1945 in [[Charleston, South Carolina]], members of the [[Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers]] union (FTA-CIO), who were mostly female and African American, began [[1945–1946 Charleston Cigar Factory strike|a five-month strike]] against the [[American Tobacco Company]]. To keep up their spirits during the cold, wet winter of 1945–1946, one of the strikers, a woman named Lucille Simmons, led a slow "long meter style" version of the gospel hymn, "We'll Overcome (I'll Be All Right)" to end each day's picketing. Union organizer [[Zilphia Horton]], who was the wife of the co-founder of the [[Highlander Folk School]] (later Highlander Research and Education Center), said she learned it from Simmons. Horton was Highlander's music director during 1935–1956, and it became her custom to end group meetings each evening by leading this, her favorite song. During the presidential campaign of [[Henry A. Wallace]], "We Will Overcome" was printed in ''Bulletin No. 3'' (September 1948), 8, of [[People's Songs]], with an introduction by Horton saying that she had learned it from the interracial FTA-CIO workers and had found it to be extremely powerful. [[Pete Seeger]], a founding member of People's Songs and its director for three years, learned it from Horton's version in 1947.<ref>Dunaway, 1990, 222–223; Seeger, 1993, 32; see also, Robbie Lieberman, ''My Song Is My Weapon: People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930–50'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [1989] 1995) p. 46, p. 185</ref> Seeger writes: "I changed it to 'We shall'... I think I liked a more open sound; 'We will' has alliteration to it, but 'We shall' opens the mouth wider; the 'i' in 'will' is not an easy vowel to sing well ...."<ref name="seegar-biography">{{cite book |last1=Seeger |first1=Pete |title=Where Have All The Flowers Gone – A Musical Autobiography |date=1997 |publisher=Sing Out |isbn=1881322106 |location=Bethlehem, PA}}</ref> Seeger also added some verses ("We'll walk hand in hand" and "The whole wide world around").

In 1950, the CIO's Department of Education and Research released the album, ''Eight New Songs for Labor'', sung by [[Joe Glazer]] ("Labor's Troubador"), and the Elm City Four. (Songs on the album were: "I Ain't No Stranger Now", "Too Old to Work", "That's All", "Humblin' Back", "Shine on Me",  "Great Day", "The Mill Was Made of Marble", and "We Will Overcome".) During a Southern CIO drive, Glazer taught the song to country singer Texas Bill Strength, who cut a version that was later picked up by 4-Star Records.<ref>Ronald Cohen and Dave Samuelson, ''Songs for Political Action: Folkmusic, Topical Songs And the American Left 1926–1953'', book published as part of Bear Family Records 10-CD box set issued in Germany in 1996.</ref>

The song made its first recorded appearance as "We Shall Overcome" (rather than "We Will Overcome") in 1952 on a disc recorded by [[Laura Duncan (American singer)|Laura Duncan]] (soloist) and The Jewish Young Singers (chorus), conducted by [[Robert De Cormier]], co-produced by Ernie Lieberman and [[Irwin Silber]] on Hootenany Records (Hoot 104-A) (Folkways, FN 2513, BCD15720), where it is identified as a Negro Spiritual.

[[Frank Hamilton (musician)|Frank Hamilton]], a folk singer from California who was a member of People's Songs and later [[The Weavers]], picked up Seeger's version. Hamilton's friend and traveling companion, fellow-Californian [[Guy Carawan]], learned the song from Hamilton. Carawan and Hamilton, accompanied by [[Ramblin Jack Elliot]], visited Highlander in the early 1950s where they also would have heard Zilphia Horton sing the song. In 1957, Seeger sang for a Highlander audience that included Dr. [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], who remarked on the way to his next stop, in [[Kentucky]], about how much the song had stuck with him. When, in 1959, Guy Carawan succeeded Horton as music director at Highlander, he reintroduced it at the school. It was the young (many of them teenagers) student-activists at Highlander, however, who gave the song the words and rhythms for which it is currently known, when they sang it to keep their spirits up during the frightening police raids on Highlander and their subsequent stays in jail in 1959–1960. Because of this, Carawan has been reluctant to claim credit for the song's widespread popularity. In the PBS video ''We Shall Overcome'', [[Julian Bond]] credits Carawan with teaching and singing the song at the founding meeting of the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] in [[Raleigh, North Carolina]], in 1960. From there, it spread orally and became an anthem of [[U.S. Southern states|Southern]] African American [[labor union]] and civil rights activism.<ref>Dunaway, 1990, 222–223; Seeger, 1993, 32.</ref> Seeger has also publicly, in concert, credited Carawan with the primary role of teaching and popularizing the song within the civil rights movement.