Customer Reviews

Sing For Freedom: The Story Of The Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs

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If you ever need an emotional and spiritual pick-up, then this CD is for you. So much unknownn talent here. The Birmingham Freedom Choir would certainly give Kirk Franklin and Walter Hawkins a run for the money and the Montgomery Movement Singers have a singing style that's haunting in its simplicity. Like Brother Stack (BTW, I'm also a native of Spartanburg, SC, let's hang out and chat about this CD when I'm in town again), I've used this CD in my classes and my students have been moved by MLK's brief address ("If you can't run-WALK, and if you can't run-CRAWL, just KEEP MOVING ON!"). Raplh Abernathy's address is also surprisingly good and while the martyred legend Medgar Evers was not a spellbinding speaker, his sincerity comes through. The beauty of this CD is the courage the speakers and singers had in the danger of what they faced. This will inspire listeners to similar courage in the problems they may face today.

I simple love this CD and all of the 26 songs. There is not one throw away song or segment on the CD recording. The CD chronicles the modern day civil rights movement through song from 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, to 1960 and the student lead demonstrations in Nashville, Tenn. to the 1963 Birmingham Mass Meetings. The artist are regional and have a wonderful quality to the singing. A must have...... I play this CD to my high school students every year and they are mesmerized. I play the CD in the teacher's lounge and they all want copies. I used some of the songs on the CD in a talk at my local Unitarian Universalist Church and got a standing ovation. I never tire of listening to the richness of the songs.

Great reminder of where we have come from and how we have to keep going on

Sing for Freedom/ The story of the civil rights movement through its songs (Smithsonian Folkways): Twenty-six historic tracks of songs and moments from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. As a slice of history, the importance of these recordings is priceless. For the fan of Rock n Roll, this movement and these songs helped shape the entire direction of the music of the 1960's and beyond. To listen to this CD before listening to the earliest 60's Rock and Folk albums is to give yourself the context in which those groups and individuals were about to change their music. The "protest songs" that defined 60's Rock was born out of the ever-present realities of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. This, for example, is the context in which we understand how a romantic soul singer like Marvin Gaye can end up creating a masterpiece of questioning protest like "What's Going On". This CD ought to be part of every Rock fan's collection as well as in the collection of the historian.

Every social movement, and the Southern black civil rights movement of the 1950's and early 1960's was no exception, not only has to have its slogans, its placards and its orators but also its anthems. For those unfamiliar with its history this little CD will, in song and speech, give the highlights of the movement as it pressed on from Montgomery, Alabama in the mid-1950's to Albany, Georgia, Greenwood, Mississippi, Birmingham, Alabama and many, many other smaller but no less important ports of call in the struggle for first- class citizenship for blacks in the Jim Crow South. For those familiar with the story of the struggle down South you will get a full storehouse of memories of the songs that became part of the greater culture and still sent a chill of excitement and expectation through this reviewer' s body when he listened to them. As we are painfully aware of today, that civil rights movement fell far short of creating that racial equality we were after but certainly not for lack of inspiring music.

As mentioned above, an added attraction here is some of the oration of the time by the black leadership. Obviously that meant Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference but also Bob Moses from the voter-registration drives led by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). And the NAACP's Medgar Evers before his assassination. And the star of the piece- the heroic leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Fannie Lou Hamer who calmly set about turning the tables on the establishment. Two things should be remembered from that time. One is Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddamn" (not included here) for that says in song what the struggle was all about and what civil rights workers were up against. The other, for all those who want to praise the Democratic Party's role in civil rights history just remember that when there was choice between Ms. Hamer's Freedom Democrats and the Jim Crow Democrats in the 1964 Democratic Convention they seated the Jim Crow delegation.

That said , musically the selections here reflect the central importance, good or bad, of the black church in this democratic fight with some "fighting" songs, some of `redemption' and some as fuel to keep the struggle going, especially when the Southern white establishment and their assorted henchmen counter-attacked. The songs that most reflect these themes are " We Are Soldiers In The Army", "This Little Light", "Which Side Are You On?", "Keep Your Eyes On The Prize" and the movement anthem "We Shall Overcome".

I ordered this particular item to use for background music during an upcoming program. Although the historical liner notes are excellent, the sound quality prevented my being able to use the cd.

If you're interested in Black History, then you'll love this CD.