Editing We Shall Overcome (section)

==Use in the 1960s civil rights and other protest movements==
In August 1963, 22-year old [[folksinger]] [[Joan Baez]] led a crowd of 3,000 in singing "We Shall Overcome" at the [[Lincoln Memorial]] during [[A. Philip Randolph]]'s [[March on Washington]]. [[President of the United States|President]] [[Lyndon Johnson]], himself a Southerner, used the phrase "we shall overcome" in addressing Congress on March 15, 1965,<ref>Lyndon Johnson, [http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/johnson.htm speech] of March 15, 1965, accessed March 28, 2007 on HistoryPlace.com</ref> in a speech delivered after the violent "[[Bloody sunday (1965)|Bloody Sunday]]" attacks on civil rights demonstrators during the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]], thus legitimizing the protest movement.

Four days before the April 4, 1968 [[assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.]], King recited the words from "We Shall Overcome" in his final sermon, delivered in Memphis on Sunday, March 31.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=06&year=2008&base_name=a_new_normal|title=A new normal|access-date=2008-10-01|archive-date=2011-10-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111012013617/http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=06&year=2008&base_name=a_new_normal|url-status=dead}}</ref> He had done so in a similar sermon he gave previously in 1965 to an interfaith congregation at [[Temple Israel of Hollywood]], [[California]]:<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://hearingvoices.com/transcript.php?fID=314|title=Hearing Voices - Radio Transcript #|website=Hearingvoices.com|access-date=14 March 2022}}</ref>

{{blockquote|text=We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome. And I believe it because somehow the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right; "no lie can live forever". We shall overcome because [[William Cullen Bryant]] is right; "truth crushed to earth will rise again". We shall overcome because [[James Russell Lowell]] is right:

{{poemquote|
Truth forever on the scaffold, 
Wrong forever on the throne. 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, 
And behind the then unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, 
Keeping watch above his own.}}

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to speed up the day. And in the words of prophecy, every valley shall be exalted. And every mountain and hill shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This will be a great day. This will be a marvelous hour. And at that moment—figuratively speaking in biblical words—the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy<ref>From the first King had liked to cite these same inspiration passages. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" is from the writings of [[Theodore Parker]] the Unitarian abolitionist minister who was King's favorite theologian. Compare the transcript of this 1957 speech given in Washington, D.C.{{cite web|url=http://www.mlkonline.net/ballot.html|title=Give Us the Ballot|publisher=Address Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, Washington D.C.|date=1957-05-17}}.</ref>}}

"We Shall Overcome" was sung days later by over fifty thousand attendees at the [[funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.]]<ref name=Kotz05>{{cite book|last=Kotz|first=Nick|title=Judgment days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the laws that changed America|year=2005|publisher=Houghton Mifflin|location=Boston|isbn=0-618-08825-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/judgmentdayslynd00kotz/page/419 419]|chapter=14. Another Martyr|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/judgmentdayslynd00kotz/page/419}}</ref>

Farmworkers in the United States later sang the song in [[Spanish language|Spanish]] during the strikes and grape boycotts of the late 1960s.<ref>{{cite book   | title = Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas, Volume 8 | author= Alan J. Watt |publisher = Texas A&M University Press |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=jTw3BlZgZvYC&q=we+shall+overcome+El+Teatro+Campesino&pg=PA80 | date = 2010  | page =  80 | isbn = 9781603441933 | access-date = 15 July 2016 }}</ref> The song was notably sung by the [[United States|U.S.]] [[United States Senate|Senator]] for [[New York (state)|New York]] [[Robert F. Kennedy]], when he led anti-[[Apartheid]] crowds in choruses from the rooftop of his car while touring [[South Africa]] in 1966.<ref>{{cite book |author=Thomas, Evan |title=Robert Kennedy: His Life |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/robertkennedy00thom/page/322 322] |isbn=0-7432-0329-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/robertkennedy00thom/page/322 |date=2002-09-10 }}</ref> It was also the song which [[Abie Nathan]] chose to broadcast as the anthem of the [[Voice of Peace]] radio station on October 1, 1993, and as a result it found its way back to South Africa in the later years of the [[Anti-Apartheid Movement]].<ref>Dunaway ([1981, 1990] 2008) p. 243.</ref>

[[William Bradford Reynolds]], facing a mounting torrent of criticism for not moving fast enough on civil rights enforcement in the 1980s, sang "We Shall Overcome" hand in hand with [[Jesse Jackson]] on a trip to meet with the black communities of the [[Mississippi Delta]].<ref>{{Cite magazine| last = Dowd| first = Maureen| title = Suddenly It Was All Action| magazine = TIME| access-date = 2024-08-19| date = 1983-07-25| url = https://time.com/archive/6699675/suddenly-it-was-all-action/}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web| title = Government Reform: Fire Them All |work=The Harvard Crimson| access-date = 2024-08-19| url = https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1992/10/26/government-reform-fire-them-all-pbibts/}}</ref>

The [[Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association]] adopted "we shall overcome" as a slogan and used it in the title of its retrospective publication, ''We Shall Overcome – The History of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland 1968–1978''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/crights/purdie.htm|title=CAIN: Events: Civil Rights: Bob Purdie (1990) The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association|website=Cain.ulster.ac.uk|access-date=14 March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/crights/nicra/nicra78.htm|title=CAIN: Events: Civil Rights - "We Shall Overcome" .... published by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA; 1978)|website=Cain.ulster.ac.uk|access-date=14 March 2022}}</ref> The film ''[[Bloody Sunday (film)|Bloody Sunday]]'' depicts march leader and [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Member of Parliament]] (MP) [[Ivan Cooper]] leading the song shortly before 1972's [[Bloody Sunday (1972)|Bloody Sunday shootings]]. In 1997, the Christian men's ministry, [[Promise Keepers]] featured the song on its worship CD for that year: ''The Making of a Godly Man'', featuring worship leader Donn Thomas and the [[Maranatha! Music|Maranatha!]] Promise Band. [[Bruce Springsteen]]'s re-interpretation of the song was included on the 1998 tribute album ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger'' as well as on Springsteen's 2006 album ''[[We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions]]''.

On March 4, 2025, [[United States House of Representatives|House]] Representative [[Al Green (politician)|Al Green]] ([[Democratic Party (United States)|D]]-[[Texas's 9th congressional district|TX 9)]] and several colleagues sang the song acapella in protest during [[President of the United States|President]] [[Donald Trump]]'s [[2025 Donald Trump speech to a joint session of Congress|2025 speech to a joint session of Congress]]. Congressman Green was removed from the House chamber by U.S. Capitol Police for the remainder of the evening for another interruption regarding [[Medicaid]], and was subsequently censured by the House of Representatives for disrupting the President's joint address to Congress, pursuant to a resolution introduced the next morning by Representative [[Dan Newhouse]] ([[Republican Party (United States)|R]]-[[Washington's 4th congressional district|WA 4]]).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-03-06 |title=Al Green censured for joint session outburst |url=https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/06/congress/al-green-censured-sotu-00215582 |access-date=2025-03-06 |website=POLITICO |language=en}}</ref> The resolution to censure Green officially passed the House of Representatives 224 to 198 via rollcall vote on March 6, 2025, with 'Yea' votes from all 214 House Republican members along with ten House Democrats.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rep. Newhouse |first=Dan [R-WA-4 |date=2025-03-05 |title=H.Res.189 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Censuring Representative Al Green of Texas. |url=https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/189 |access-date=2025-03-06 |website=www.congress.gov}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=US House |first=of Representatives |date=March 6, 2025 |title=Final Results for Roll Call 62 |url=https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2025/roll062.xml}}</ref> In the aftermath, Green and several members broke out into the song again on the well.