Freedom Songs: Helping Black Activists, Black Residents, and White Volunteers Work Together in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, during the Summer of 1964

“Freedom songs” is the umbrella term for the diverse body of songs adapted or composed for the civil rights movement, particularly songs in most frequent use in that struggle during the early 1960s. Many of these songs remain familiar today, among them “This Little Light of Mine,” “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round” and, of course, “We Shall Overcome.”1 Two activists—one white, one black—attest to the powerful roles freedom songs played. Veteran singer and activist Pete Seeger (2004) made the broad claim that the civil rights movement could not have succeeded without the songs. Cordell Reagon, organizer and song leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was more specific in an earlier interview with scholar Kerran Sanger (1995, 40): “The music is what held the Movement together.” Regional studies are emerging as a sound route to a more nuanced understanding of the remarkable political, demographic, and event-related complexities of civil rights history (Moye 2011). John Dittmer’s Local People: