The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights in Southern states. Music played an important role in this movement in terms of bringing the people together in the communities, such as the churches and unite them under one cause, and encourage them to keep fighting for their legal rights as citizens of the United States. The name Freedom Songs then was given to the songs that were sung by the people. “If you listen to recordings of mass meetings, you will find, many times, people singing -- and you need to imagine that everybody in the church is singing. That is congregational singing. It is the kind of singing I grew up with in the Black church, in school, on the playground....” said Mrs. Reagon. Also, what made these songs easy to sing was they all had familiar melodies to most of the people so they can be involved and feel the effect of music while singing.
Here is the link to the essay written by Berince Johnson Reagon in regarding to music and the Civil Rights Movement.
Freedom Songs were congregational; they were sung unrehearsed in the tradition of the Afro-American folk church . . . The core song repertoire was formed from the reservoir of Afro-American traditional song performed in the older style of singing. This music base was expanded to include most of the popular Afro-American music forms and singing techniques of the period. From this reservoir, activist song leaders made a new music for a changed time. Lyrics were transformed, traditional melodies were adapted and procedures associated with old forms were blended with new forms to create freedom songs capable of expressing the force and intent of the movement.
These are links for more information about the freedom songs.
Finally, after years of suffrage, we now see the black community as equal as the white community. A great example of that is the President of the United States as he is the First black president in the United States. Without the fight by the black people back in the 1950s, none of what we see now could have been achieved. Therefore, we owe them our respect and admiration.
Here is a link to the celebration of the Black History Month at the White House that shows how important this event is not only for the Black people, but to country as a whole.
