Freedom Songs In The Civil Rights Movement

Primarily however, freedom songs advocated that the Civil Rights of the 1960s was a protest movement that practised only nonviolent strategies and tactics. Nonviolence was chosen as the most effective strategy for activists to use due to its focus on Christian theology, as masses of people brought up in the church and attending mass meetings would understand its significance. Nonviolence was also a tactic that could be learnt, with protesters using ‘weapons’ such as freedom songs to act as a psychological barrier between themselves and a violent mob. This is supported as both practitioners and critics have tended to see music as an effect external weapon, as demonstrators used songs as an emotional force when in a public protest. In the 1961 Freedom Rides, songs were used as a weapon when a group pulling into Montgomery …show more content…
Ordinary people fuelled the movement by attending mass meetings, marches through the streets, filling the jails and facing violent mobs: music and song helped them through every phase of this journey. Freedom songs were sung to give people the courage they lacked to join mass meetings, they compelled people to take direct action in a protest movement and persist through times of hardship. The intense sense of unity and solidarity amongst the African-American community was created by the ability to express emotions through music, whether this meant singing “We Shall Overcome” in a demonstration, or listening to “Mississippi Goddamn” on the radio. Though songs came in many different forms during the 1950s and 1960s, with some appearing as spirituals and others as an essence of ‘Black Power’, all should be considered freedom songs. These songs forced the development of the Civil Rights Movement into the Deep South, as local communities took it upon themselves to demonstrate and persevere until their voices were